The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 01, Henry Smith Williams

 

 

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THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

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THE HISTORIANS’
HISTORY
OF THE WORLD

A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of
all ages: edited, with the assistance of a distinguished
board of advisers and contributors,
by

HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME I—PROLEGOMENA; EGYPT, MESOPOTAMIA

1905

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Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
New York, U. S. A.

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Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

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KEY TO THE AUTHORITIES.

The Historians’ History of the World is in one sense of the word a compilation, but it is a compilation of unique character. The main bulk of the work is made up of direct quotations from authorities, cited with scrupulous exactness; but so novel is our method of handling this material that the casual reader might scan chapter after chapter without suspecting that the whole is not the work of a single writer. Yet every quotation, whatever its length, is explicitly credited to its source, and the reader who wishes to know the names of the authors and works quoted may constantly satisfy his curiosity without the slightest difficulty. The key to identification of authorities is found in the unobtrusive reference letters (called by the printer “superior letters”), such as b, c, d, which are scattered through the text. These reference letters refer in each case to a “Brief Reference-List” at the end of the book, where, chapter by chapter, author and work are named. Should any work be quoted more than once in a chapter, the same reference letter is used to identify that work in each case.

The reference letters are used in two ways: they are either (1) placed at the end of a sentence, in which case they designate an actual quotation, or (2) they are placed against the name of an author, in which case they designate an authority cited but not necessarily quoted. Each reference letter at the end of a sentence refers to all the matter that precedes it back to the last similarly placed reference letter. The quotation thus designated may be of any length,—a few sentences or many pages. This quotation may contain reference letters of the second type just explained, but, if so, these may be altogether disregarded in determining the limits of the quotation; the context will make it clear that there is no change of authorship. On the other hand, however continuous the narrative may seem, a reference letter at the end of a sentence must always be understood to divide one quotation from another.

All this may seem a trifle complex as told here, but it will be found admirably simple and effective in practice. The reader has but to make the experiment, to find that he can trace the authorship of every line of the work without the slightest difficulty. It may be well to add, however, that the reference letter a is reserved for editorial matter, and that, very exceptionally, this letter is used in combination with another letter, as ab, ac, ad, to give credit for matter that has been editorially adapted, but not quoted verbatim. It is perhaps hardly necessary to explain that direct quotations, such as go to make up the bulk of our work, are often given in an abbreviated form through the omission of matter that is redundant or, for any reason, inadmissible. The necessity for such change is obvious, since otherwise the varied materials could not possibly be made to harmonise or to meet the needs of our space. But, beyond this, no liberty whatever is taken with matter presented as a direct quotation. Where editorial modification is thought necessary, the use of reference letters makes such modification feasible without introducing the slightest ambiguity. We repeat that every line of the work is ascribed to its proper source with the utmost fidelity. Any matter not otherwise accredited—as, for example, various introductions, chronologies, bibliographies, and the like—will be understood to be editorial. Brackets also indicate editorial matter.

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CONTENTS

VOLUME I
PART I. PROLEGOMENA
BOOK I. HISTORY, HISTORIANS, AND THE WRITING OF HISTORIES
	PAGE
CHAPTER I
Some General Considerations	1
The oriental period, 2. The classical historians, 3. The mediæval and modern histories, 4.
CHAPTER II
Materials for the Writing of History	5
CHAPTER III
The Methods of the Historians	9
CHAPTER IV
World Histories	13
CHAPTER V
The Present History	22
BOOK II. A GLIMPSE INTO THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD
CHAPTER I
Introductory	32
CHAPTER II
Cosmogony—Ancient and Modern Ideas as to the Origin of the World	33
[xii]CHAPTER III
Cosmology and Geography—Ancient and Modern Ideas	38
CHAPTER IV
The Antiquity of the Earth and of Man	40
CHAPTER V
The Races of Man and the Aryan Question	43
CHAPTER VI
On Prehistoric Culture	45
Language, 44. Clothing and housing of prehistoric man, 46. The use of fire, 46. Implements of peace and war, 47. The domestication of animals, 47. Agriculture, 48. Government, 49. The arts of painting, sculpture, and decorative architecture, 50. The art of writing, 50.
PART II. EGYPT
Introductory Essay. Egypt as a World Influence. By Dr. Adolf Erman	57
Egyptian History in Outline (4400-332 B.C.)	65
CHAPTER I
The Egyptian Race and its Origin	77
The country and its inhabitants, 81. Prehistoric Egypt, 88.
CHAPTER II
The Old Memphis Kingdom (ca. 4400-2700 B.C.)	90
The first dynasty, 90. The second dynasty, 92. The third dynasty, 92. The pyramid dynasty, 93. A modern account of the pyramids, 95. The builders of the pyramids, 98. The beautiful Nitocris, 104.
CHAPTER III
The Old Theban Kingdom (ca. 2700-1635 B.C.)	106
The eleventh dynasty, 106. The voyage to Punt, 108. The twelfth dynasty, 110. Monuments of the twelfth dynasty; a classical view, 113. The ruins of Karnak, 115. The fall of the Theban kingdom, 117. The foreign rule, 118. The Hyksos rule; the seventeenth dynasty, 121.
[xiii]CHAPTER IV
The Restoration (ca. 1635-1365 B.C.)	126
Eighteenth dynasty, 126. The Hyksos expulsion: Aahmes and his successors, 127. Tehutimes II; Queen Hatshepsu, 133. Triumphs of Tehutimes III; his successors, 136.
CHAPTER V
The Nineteenth Dynasty (ca. 1365-1285 B.C.)	141
King Seti, 142. Ramses (II) the Great, 144. The war-poem of Pentaur, 148. The kingdom of the Kheta and the nineteenth dynasty, 150. Death of Ramses II, 153.
CHAPTER VI
The Finding of the Royal Mummies	155
How came these monarchs here? 157.
CHAPTER VII
The Period of Decay (Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties: ca. 1285-655 B.C.)	162
Meneptah, 162. From Setnekht to Ramses VIII and Meri-Amen Meri-Tmu, 166. The sorrows of a soldier, 170. Egypt under the dominion of mercenaries, 171. The Ethiopian conquest, 174. Table of contemporaneous dynasties, 179.
CHAPTER VIII
The Closing Scenes (Twenty-sixth To Thirty-first Dynasties: 655-322 B.C.)	180
Psamthek, 180. The good king Sabach (Shabak) and Psammetichus, 184. The restoration in Egypt, 185. The Persian conquest and the end of Egyptian autonomy, 188. The atrocities of Cambyses, 191.
CHAPTER IX
Manners and Customs of the Egyptians	196
The position of the king, 198. Weapons of war, 202. Battle methods, 205. Social customs, 208. The Egyptians as seen by Herodotus, 212. Homes of the people, 216.
CHAPTER X
The Egyptian Religion	219
Religious festivals and offerings, 222. Gifts and riches of temples, 225. Diodorus on animal worship, 228. A modern account of the worship of Apis, the sacred bull, 232. The methods of embalming the dead, 236.
[xiv]CHAPTER XI
Egyptian Culture	240
The hieroglyphics, 249. “By what characters, pictures, and images the learned Egyptians expressed the mysteries of their mindes,” 250. The riddle of the sphinx, 251. Literature, 257. The Castaway: a tale of the twelfth dynasty, 260.
CHAPTER XII
Concluding Summary of Egyptian History	263
APPENDIX A
Classical Traditions	267
Another ancient account of the Nile, 273. A Greek view of the origins of Egyptian history, 278.
APPENDIX B
The Problem of Egyptian Chronology	287
Manetho’s table of the Egyptian dynasties, 291.
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	293
A General Bibliography of Egyptian History	295
PART III. MESOPOTAMIA
Introductory Essay. The Relations of Babylonia with other Semitic Countries. By Joseph Halévy	309
Mesopotamian History in Outline (6000-538 B.C.)	318
CHAPTER I
Land and People	337
The land, 338. Original peoples of Babylon: the Sumerians, 342. The Semitic Babylonians, 344. The original home of the Babylonian Semite, 347.
CHAPTER II
Old Babylonian History (ca. 4500-745 B.C.)	349
The beginnings of history, 351. The rulers of Shirpurla, 351. Kings of Kish and Gishban, 356. The first dynasty of Ur, 359. Kings of Agade, 360. The kings of Ur, 363. Accession of a south Arabian dynasty, 363. The Kassite dynasty, 364. Assyrian conquest of Babylon, 364.
[xv]CHAPTER III
The Rise of Assyria (ca. 3000-726 B.C.)	366
Land and people, 369. Assyrian capitals: Asshur and Nineveh, 371. The rise of Assyria, 372. The first great Assyrian conqueror, 377. The reign and cruelty of Asshurnazirpal, 380. Shalmaneser II and his successors, 387. Tiglathpileser III, 391. Shalmaneser IV, 395.
CHAPTER IV
Four Generations of Assyrian Greatness (722-626 B.C.)	397
Sennacherib, 403. Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal, 416. Esarhaddon’s reign, 419. Asshurbanapal’s early years, 425. The Brothers’ War, 431. The last wars of Asshurbanapal, 434.
CHAPTER V
The Decline and Fall of Assyria (626-606 B.C.)	438
Last years and fall of the Assyrian Empire, 440.
CHAPTER VI
Renascence and Fall of Babylon (555-538 B.C.)	446
Contemporary chronology, 448. Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar, 449. The followers of Nebuchadrezzar, 453. The reign of Nabonidus, 455.
CHAPTER VII
Manners and Customs of Babylonia-Assyria	460
War methods, 460. Our sources, 461. Assyrian war costumes and war methods, 468. The arts of peace in Babylonia-Assyria, 472. Babylon and its customs described by an eye-witness, 473. A later classical account of Babylon, 479. The commerce of the Babylonians, 484. Ships among the Assyrians, 491. Laws of the Babylonians and Assyrians, 494. Sale of a slave, 496. Sale of a house, 497. The code of Khammurabi, 498. The discovery of the code, 498. Miscellaneous regulations, 501. Regulations concerning slaves, 502. Provisions concerning robbery, 502. Concerning leases and tillage, 503. Concerning canals, 504. Commerce, debt, 504. Domestic legislation, divorce, inheritance, 505. Laws concerning adoption, 509. Laws of recompense, 509. Regulations concerning physicians and veterinary surgeons, 510. Illegal branding of slaves, 510. Regulations concerning builders, 511. Regulations concerning shipping, 511. Regulations concerning the hiring of animals, farming, wages, etc., 511. Regulations concerning the buying of slaves, 513.
CHAPTER VIII
The Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians	515
The Assyrian story of the creation, 520. The Babylonian religion, 521. The epic of Gilgamish, 525. Ishtar’s descent into Hades, 530.
[xvi]CHAPTER IX
Babylonian and Assyrian Culture	534
Literature and science, 536. Epistolary literature, 539. Art, 543. Assyrian art, 552. Assyrian sculpture and the evolution of art, 558. A classical estimate of Chaldean philosophy and astrology, 563. The Babylonian year, 565. The Babylonian day and its division into hours, 566. Assyrian science, 567.
APPENDIX A
Classical Traditions	571
The Creation and the Flood, described by Polyhistor, 573. Other classical fragments: of the Chaldean kings, 575. Of the Chaldean kings and the deluge, 576. Of the tower of Babel, 577. Of Abraham, 577. Of Nabonassar, 577. Of the destruction of the Jewish Temple, 577. Of Nebuchadrezzar, 577. Of the Chaldean kings after Nebuchadrezzar, 578. Of the feast of Sacea, 579. A fragment of Megasthenes concerning Nebuchadrezzar, 579. Ninus and Semiramis, 580. Semiramis builds a great city, 584. Semiramis begins a career of conquest, 588. Semiramis invades India, 589. Another view of Semiramis, 593. Reign of Ninyas to Sardanapalus, 594. The destruction of Nineveh, 598.
APPENDIX B
Excavations in Mesopotamia and Their Results	600
The ruins of Nineveh and M. Botta’s first discovery, 600. Layard’s discoveries at Nineveh, 604. Later discoveries in Babylonia and Assyria, 610. The results of the excavations, 612. Treasures from Nineveh, 613. The library of a king of Nineveh, 618. How the Assyrian books were read, 623.
Brief Reference-list of Authorities by Chapters	627
A General Bibliography of Mesopotamian History	629

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PART I. PROLEGOMENA

BOOK I. HISTORY, HISTORIANS, AND THE WRITING OF HISTORIES

CHAPTER I
SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Broadly speaking, the historians of all recorded ages seem to have had the same general aims. They appear always to seek either to glorify something or somebody, or to entertain and instruct their readers. The observed variety in historical compositions arises not from difference in general motive, but from varying interpretations of the relative status of these objects, and from differing judgments as to the manner of thing likely to produce these ends, combined, of course, with varying skill in literary composition, and varying degrees of freedom of action.

As to freedom of selective judgment, the earliest historians whose records are known to us exercised practically none at all. Their task was to glorify the particular monarch who commanded them to write. The records of a Ramses, a Sennacherib, or a Darius tell only of the successful campaigns, in which the opponent is so much as mentioned only in contrast with the prowess of the victor.

With these earliest historians, therefore, the ends of historical composition were met in the simplest way, by reciting the deeds, real or alleged, of a king, as Ramses, Sennacherib, or David; or of the gods, as Osiris, or Ishtar, or Yahveh. As to entertainment and instruction, the reader was expected to be overawed by the recital of mighty deeds, and to draw the conclusion that it would be well for him to do homage to the glorified monarch, human or divine.

A little later, in what may be termed the classical period, the historians had attained to a somewhat freer position and wider vision, and they sought to glorify heroes who were neither gods nor kings, but the representatives of the people in a more popular sense. Thus the Iliad dwells upon the achievements of Achilles and Ajax and Hector rather than upon the deeds of Menelaus and Priam, the opposing kings. Hitherto the deeds of all these heroes would simply have been transferred to the credit of the king. Now the individual of lesser rank is to have a hearing. Moreover, the state itself is now considered apart from its particular ruler. The histories of Herodotus, of Xenophon, of Thucydides, of Polybius, in effect make for the glorification, not of individuals, but of peoples.

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This shift from the purely egoistic to the altruistic standpoint marks a long step. The writer now has much more clearly in view the idea of entertaining, without frightening, his reader; and he thinks to instruct in matters pertaining to good citizenship and communal morality rather than in deference to kings and gods. In so doing the historian marks the progress of civilisation of the Greek and early Roman periods.

In the mediæval time there is a strong reaction. To frighten becomes again a method of attacking the consciousness; to glorify the gods and heroes a chief aim. As was the case in the Egyptian and Persian and Indian periods of degeneration, the early monotheism has given way to polytheism. Hagiology largely takes the place of secular history. A constantly growing company of saints demands attention and veneration. To glorify these, to show the futility of all human action that does not make for such glorification, became again an aim of the historian. But this influence is by no means altogether dominant; and, though there is no such list of historians worthy to be remembered as existed in the classical period, yet such names appear as those of Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne; De Joinville, the panegyrist of Saint Louis; Villani, Froissart, and Monstrelet, the chroniclers; and Comines, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini.

In the modern period the gods have been more or less disbanded, the heroes modified, even the kings subordinated. We hear much talk of the “philosophy” of history, even of the “science” of history. Common sense and the critical spirit are supposed to hold sway everywhere. Yet, after all, it would be too much to suppose that any historian even of the most modern school has written entirely without prejudice of race, of station, or of religion. And in any event the same ideals, generally stated, are before the historian of to-day that have actuated his predecessors—to glorify something or somebody, though it be, perhaps, a principle and not a person; and to entertain and instruct his readers.

The Oriental Period

The earliest historians whose writings have come down to us are the authors of the records on the monuments of Egypt and of Mesopotamia. We shall see later on that these records, made in languages a knowledge of which has only been recovered in the past century, are full of historical interest because of the facts they narrate, and the insight they give us into the life of their times. For the moment, however, we are only concerned with the method of their construction. They are parts of records dating from many centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. Their authors are utterly unknown by name. The narrative is, indeed, in some cases, couched in the first person, but it is not to be supposed from this that the alleged writer—who, of course, is the king whose deeds are glorified—is the actual composer of the narrative. The actual scribes, mere adjuncts of the royal ménage, never dreamed of putting their own names on record beside those of their royal masters. Yet their work has preserved to future generations the names of kings that otherwise would have been absolutely forgotten. For example, Tehutimes III of Egypt and Asshurbanapal of Assyria, two of the most powerful monarchs of antiquity, had ceased to be remembered even by name several centuries before the dawn of our era, and for two thousand years no human being knew that such persons had ever existed. Yet now, thanks to the monuments, their deeds are almost as fully known to us as the deeds of an Alexander or a Cæsar.

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There is, indeed, one regard in which these most ancient historical records have an advantage over more recent works. They were for the most part graven in stone or stamped in clay that was burned to stonelike hardness, and they have come down to us with the assurances of authenticity which must always be lacking in many compositions of more recent periods. The Babylonian and Assyrian records lay buried with the ruins of cities whose very location had been forgotten for ages. The most recent of these records had been seen by no human eye for more than two thousand years. Their unnamed authors seem thus to speak to us directly across the centuries. However these earliest of historians may have dreamed of immortality for their work, they can hardly have hoped to speak to eager audiences in regions far beyond the limits of their world, twenty-five centuries after the very nation to which they belonged had vanished from the earth, and the language in which they wrote had ceased to be known to men. Yet that unique glory was reserved for them.

The Classical Historians

It requires but a glance at the historians of the classical period to see how altered is the point of view from which they write. Here we have no longer men commanded by a monarch, or impelled by religious fervour to glorify a single person or epoch or country to the utter exclusion of everything else. We have bounded from insularity of view to universality. Even the Homeric legends deal with the events of two continents and of several countries. Herodotus and Diodorus make the writing of their histories a life-work. They travel from one country to another, and familiarise themselves with their subject as much as possible at first hand. They mingle with the scholars of many lands, and listen to their recitals of the annals of their respective peoples. They weigh and consider, though in a quite different mental balance from that which an historian uses in our day. They spend thirty, forty, years in composing their books. From them, then, we have, not simple chronicles of a single event, but universal histories. These are in many ways different from the universal histories of our own time; but in their frank, human way of looking out upon the world, they have a charm that is quite their own. In their interest for the general reader, they have perhaps never been excelled. And in their citation of fact and fable they become a storehouse upon which succeeding generations of historians have drawn to this day.

There are other historians of the period no less remarkable, some of them even superior, from some points of view, to these masters. The names of Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius among the Greeks, of Tacitus, Livy, Cæsar among the Romans, to go no farther, are as familiar to every cultivated mind of our own day as the names of Gibbon, Macaulay, or Bancroft. Several of these were men who participated in the events they described, and, confining themselves to limited periods, treated these periods in such masterly fashion, with such breadth of view and discriminating judgment, that their verdicts have weight with all succeeding generations of historians. Thucydides, writing in the fifth century B.C., is regarded, even in our critical age, as a matchless writer of history. An oft-repeated tale relates that Macaulay despaired of ever equalling him, though feeling that he might hope to duplicate the work of any other historian. Polybius and Tacitus are mentioned with respect by the most exacting investigators. Clearly, then, this was a culminating epoch in the writing of histories.

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The Mediæval and Modern Histories

We have seen that in the classical period the brief space of half a dozen generations saw a cluster of great histories written. No such intellectual activity in this direction marked the mediæval period. Now for the space of more than a thousand years there was no work produced that could bear a moment’s comparison with the great productions of the earlier periods. One theme was now dominant in the Western world, and the intellects that might have produced histories of broad scope under other circumstances contented themselves with harping on the one string. So we have ecclesiastical records in place of histories.

In due time the reaction came, but it was long before the influence of the dominant spirit was made subordinate to a saner view. Indeed, scarcely before our own generation, since the classical period, have historians been able to cast a clear and unbiased glance across the entire field of history.

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a school of secular historians with broad views and high aims again arose. Now once more men sought to write world histories not dominated by a single idea. The first great exponents of the movement were Gibbon and Hume in England, Schlozzer and Müller in Germany. They have had a host of followers, of whom the greater number have been Germans.

The attitude of these modern writers is philosophical; they are disposed to recognise in the bald facts of human existence an importance commensurate solely with the lessons they can teach for the betterment of humanity. In this modern view, each fact must be correlated with a multitude of other facts before its true significance can be perceived. Events are, in this view, meaningless unless we know something of the human motives that led to their enactment. The task of the historian is to search for causes, to endeavour to build up from the lessons of history a true philosophy of living. It is really no different a task, as already pointed out, from that which such ancient writers as Polybius had very prominently in view; but there is an emphasis upon this phase of the subject in our time that it did not generally receive in the earlier age. In other words, the philosophy of history of our time is a more conscious philosophy. For a century past the phrase, “philosophy of history,” has been current, and it has been the custom for men who were not primarily historians to discourse on the subject. Latterly, following again the current of the times, we have come to speak even of the “science” of history; indeed, in Germany in particular, history to-day claims unchallenged position as a true science. The word “science” is a very flexible term, yet there are those who deny that it may be properly applied, as yet at any rate, to our aggregation of knowledge of historical facts. The question resolves itself into a matter of definition, the solution of which is not particularly important.

The essential thing is that the modern historical investigator is fully actuated by the spirit of scientific accuracy and impartiality. And since impartiality depends very largely upon breadth of view, it results rather curiously that the minute investigations of the specialist make indirectly for the comprehensive view of the World Historian. Professor Freeman well expressed the idea when he said:

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“My position is that in all our studies of history and language—and the study of language, besides all that it is in other ways, is one most important branch of the study of history—we must cast away all distinctions of ‘ancient’ and ‘modern,’ of ‘dead’ and ‘living,’ and must boldly grapple with the great fact of the unity of history. As man is the same in all ages, the history of man is one in all ages. No language, no period of history, can be understood in its fullness; none can be clothed with its highest interest and its highest profit, if it be looked at wholly in itself, without reference to its bearing on those other languages, those other periods of history, which join with it to make up the great whole of human, or at least of Aryan and European, being.”

Such a position as this, assumed by one of the most minute searchers among modern historians, is highly interesting as illustrative of a reactionary tendency which will probably characterise the historical work of the near future. Hair-splitting analysis having been carried to its limits of refinement, there will probably come a reaction in the direction of a more comprehensive study of historical events in their wider relations. The work of the specialist, after all, is really important only when it furnishes material for wider generalisations. All minute workers in the fields of biology, geology, and the allied sciences, in the first half of the nineteenth century were unconsciously gathering material which, interesting in itself, became of real importance chiefly in so far as it ultimately aided in elucidating the great generalisation of Darwin. Perhaps the minute historians of to-day are in similar position.

The special worker, imbued with enthusiasm for his subject, is apt to forget the real insignificance of his labours. Entire epochs are dominated by the idea of microscopic research, and the workers even come to suppose that microscopic analysis is in itself an end; whereas, rightly considered, it is only the means to an end. We are just passing through such an epoch as regards historical investigation. But, as just suggested, it seems probable that we are approaching a new epoch when the work of the specialist will be subordinated to its true purpose, while at the same time proving its real value as a means to the proper end of historical studies—the comprehension of the world-historical relations of events.

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CHAPTER II
MATERIALS FOR THE WRITING OF HISTORY

It is obvious that the materials for the writing of history consist for the most part of written records. It is true that all manner of monuments, including the ruins of buried cities, remains of ancient walls and highways, and all other traces of a former civilisation, must be allotted their share as records to guide the investigator in his attempt to reconstruct past conditions. But for anything like a definite presentation of the events of by-gone days, it is absolutely essential, as Sir George Cornewall Lewis pointed out in great detail, to have access to contemporary written records, either at first hand, or through the medium of copyists, in case the original records themselves have been destroyed. Lewis reached the conclusion, as the result of his exhaustive examination of the credibility of early Roman history, that a tradition of a past event is hardly transmitted orally from generation to generation with anything like accuracy of detail for more than a century.

Theoretically, then, no accurate history could ever be constructed of events covering a longer period than about four generations before the introduction of writing. In actual practice the scope of the strictly historic view of man’s progress is confined to very much narrower limits than this, for the simple reason that the earliest written records that might otherwise serve[6] to give us glimpses of remote history have very rarely been preserved. The destruction of ancient inscriptions with the lapse of centuries has led to a great deal of difference of opinion as to the time when the art of writing was introduced among various nations. In reference to the Greeks in particular, the dispute has been ardently waged, many scholars contending that the art of writing was little practised in Greece until the sixth century B.C.

Later discoveries, in particular a knowledge of the inscription on the statue of Ramses at Abu Simbel, have made it clear that the earlier estimates were much too conservative, and it now seems probable that the Greeks had been acquainted with the art of writing for several, or perhaps many, centuries before the one previously fixed upon. It is not to be supposed, however, that the practice of the art of writing was universal in that early day. On the other hand, it was doubtless very exceptional indeed for the average individual to be able to write, and such difficulties as the lack of writing material stood in the way of composition until a relatively late period. But whether the art of writing was much or little practised in the early days does not greatly matter so far as the present-day historian is concerned, since practically all specimens of early writing in Greece disappeared in the course of succeeding ages. No fragment of any book proper, no scrap of parchment or papyrus, no single waxen tablet, from the soil of classic Greece has been preserved to us.

The Greek authors are known to us only through the efforts of successive generations of copyists; and, with the exception of a comparatively small number of Egyptian papyri, there is almost nothing in existence representing the literature of classical Greece that is older than the middle ages. There are, to be sure, considerable numbers of monumental inscriptions dating from classical times. These have the highest interest for the archæologist, but in the aggregate they give but meagre glimpses into the history of antiquity. If we were dependent upon these records for all that we know of Greek history, the entire story of that people might be told, as far as we could ever hope to learn it, in a few pages.

The case is somewhat different with Egypt and with Mesopotamia, since the climate of the former and the resistant character of the writing materials employed by the latter have permitted the modern world to receive direct messages that, under other circumstances, must inevitably have been lost. But even here the historical records are neither so abundant nor so comprehensive in their scope as might have been hoped. History-writing, in anything like a comprehensive meaning of the words, is a relatively modern art. The nearest approach to it among the nations of remote antiquity got no farther than the recording of the personal deeds of individual kings. Such records, indeed, are excellent materials for history, but they hardly constitute history by themselves. The entire lists of Egyptian inscriptions, so far as known, suffice merely to give glimpses of Egyptian history; and if the Mesopotamian records are, in this regard, somewhat more satisfactory, it is only in reference to a comparatively brief period of later Assyrian history that they can be said to have anything like comprehensiveness. As to the other nations of Oriental antiquity,—Indians, Persians, Syrians, the inhabitants of Asia Minor,—the entire sum of the monumental records that have been transmitted to us amounts to nothing more than a scattered series of vague suggestions.

In the classical world Rome is but little better off than Greece in this regard. As to both these countries, we depend for our knowledge almost[7] exclusively upon the works of historians of a relatively late period. Before Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century B.C., there is almost no consecutive history proper of Greece; and despite all the efforts of archæologists, records of Roman progress scarcely suffice to push back the prehistoric veil beyond the time of the banishment of the kings. Indeed, even for a century or two after this event transpired, the would-be historian finds himself still on very treacherous ground. The reason for this is that there were no contemporary historians in Rome in this early period; and until such contemporary chroniclers appear, no secure record of history is possible.

Once it became the fashion to write chronicles of events, the custom rapidly spread and took a fixed hold upon the people. From the day of Herodotus there was no dearth of Greek historians, and after Polybius there is an unbroken series of Roman chroniclers.

Had all the writings of these various workers been preserved to us, we should have abundant material for reconstructing the history of the entire later classical epoch in much detail; but, unfortunately, the historian worked with perishable materials. An individual papyrus or parchment roll could hardly be expected on the average to be preserved for more than a few generations, and unless copies had been made of it in the meantime, the record that it contained must inevitably be lost. Such has been the fate of the great mass of historical writings, no less than of productions in other fields of literature.

Many of the fragments of ancient writers have come down to us through rather curious channels. In the later age of Rome it became the fashion to make anthologies and compilations, and it is through such collections that the majority of classical authors are known. One of the most curious of these anthologies is that made by Athenæus about the beginning of the third century A.D. This author called his work Deipnosophistæ, or the Feast of the Learned. He attempted to give it a somewhat artistic form, making it ostensibly a dialogue in which the sayings of a company of diners were related to a friend who was not present at the banquet. The diners were supposed to have introduced quotations from the classical writers, so that the book is chiefly made up of such quotations. The work has not come down to us quite in its entirety, but, even so, no fewer than eight hundred authors and twenty-five hundred different works are represented in the anthology. Of these authors about seven hundred are known exclusively through the excerpts of Athenæus.

Two or three centuries later another Greek named Stobæus compiled a set of extracts from the Greek writers of all accessible periods prior to his own. The number of authors quoted in this anthology is more than five hundred, and here again the major part of them are quite unknown to us except through this single source. Yet another collection of excerpts was made in the latter part of the ninth century by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, who made excerpts from about 280 authors with whose works he had familiarised himself through miscellaneous reading. In addition to these works of individual compilers there were two or three anthologies compiled in the Byzantine period, including an important collection of fragments of the Greek poets which is still extant under the title of The Greek Anthology, and the elaborate set of encyclopædias made under the direction of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. But for such collections as these, supplemented by the biographical notices of such workers as Suidas, and by fragments that have come to us through a few other channels, it would scarcely have been conceived that so many authors had[8] written in the entire period of Grecian activity, since only a fraction of this number are represented by complete works that have come down to us. Such facts as these give an inkling as to the mental activity of the old-time author, while pointing a useful lesson as to the perishability of human works. In this age of easy multiplying of books through printing, one is prone to forget how precarious must have been the existence of a manuscript of the elder day. It was a long, laborious task to produce an edition of a single copy of any extended work, and each successive duplication was precisely as slow and as difficult as the first. Under these circumstances no doubt a very considerable proportion of books were never duplicated at all, and the circulation of a very large additional number most likely was limited to two or three copies. It was only works which were early recognised as having an unusual intrinsic interest or value that stood any reasonable chance of being copied often enough to insure preservation through many succeeding generations.

As one considers the field of extant manuscripts, one is led naturally to reflect on the quality of work that was likely thus to insure perpetuity, and the more we consider the subject, limiting the view for our present purpose to historical compositions, the more clear it becomes that the one prime quality that gave a lease of life to the composition of an author was the quality of human interest. In other words, such historical compositions as were works of art, rather than such as depended upon other merits, were the ones which successive generations of copyists reproduced, and which ultimately were enabled to pass the final ordeal imposed by the monks of the middle ages, who made palimpsests of many an author deserving a better fate. The upshot of this process of the survival of the fittest was that all Greek would-be historians prior to Herodotus were allowed to sink into oblivion, causing Herodotus himself to stand out as apparently the absolute creator of a new art. In point of fact, could we know the whole truth, it would doubtless appear that there was no real revolution of method effected by the writings of Herodotus. He surpassed all of his predecessors in such a measure that the future copyist saw no necessity for preserving any work but the one, since this one practically covered the field of all the rest. It is, perhaps, an ill method of phrasing, to say that these copyists saw no reason for preserving those earlier manuscripts. There was no thought in their minds of the preservation of one book and the destruction of another; they merely copied the work which interested them, or which they believed would interest the book-buying public. The disappearance of the works not copied was a mere negative result, about which no one directly concerned himself.

The proof of the value of the work of Herodotus is found in the fact that it has come down to us entire in numerous copies, something that can be said of only three or four other considerable historical compositions of the entire classical period; two others of this select company being Thucydides and Xenophon, both of whom were contemporaries of Herodotus, though considerably younger, and therefore, properly enough, counted as belonging to the next generation. Of the other Greek historians, the biographical works of Plutarch, the works of Strabo and Pausanius, which are geographical rather than strictly historical, and the Life of Alexander the Great by Arrian, are the sole ones of the large number undoubtedly written that have come down to us intact. A survey of the Roman historians furnishes an even more striking illustration, for here no one of the great historical works has been preserved in its entirety. Livy’s monumental work is entire as to the earlier books, which treat of the mythical and half-mythical period of Roman development;[9] but the parts of it that treated of later Roman history, concerning which the author could have spoken, and probably did speak, with first-hand knowledge, are almost entirely lost. In other words, the copyists of the middle ages preserved the least valuable portion of Livy, doubtless because they found the hero tales of mythical Rome more interesting than the matter-of-fact recitals of the events of the later republic and the early empire. We can hardly suppose that Livy detailed the events of the later period with less art than characterised his earlier work, but different conditions were imposed upon him. He had now to deal with much fuller records than hitherto, and no doubt he treated many subjects that seemed important to him, simply because they were near at hand, but which another generation found tiresome and not worth the trouble of copying. Thus we see emphasised again the salient point that the interesting story rather than the important historical narrative proved itself most fit for preservation in the estimate of posterity.

Of the other great historians of Rome, Tacitus, Dionysius, Dion Cassius, Polybius, have all fared rather worse than Livy, although a few briefer masterpieces, like the two histories of Sallust and the Gallic Wars of Cæsar, and such biographies as the “Lives” of Suetonius and Cornelius Nepos, were able to fight their way through the middle ages and gain the safe shelter of the printing-press without material loss.

But perhaps the most suggestive example of all is furnished by the brief world history of Justin, which, if not quite entire, has been preserved as to its main structure in various manuscripts. This work is an artistic epitome of a large, and in its day authoritative, history of the world, written by Trogus Pompeius. Justin, when a student in Rome in the day of the early Cæsars, was led to make an epitome of this work, seemingly as proof to his friends in the provinces that he was not wasting his time. He did his task so well that future generations saw no reason to trouble themselves with the prolixities of the original work, but were content to copy and re-copy the epitome, pointing the moral that brevity, next to artistic excellence, is the surest road to permanent remembrance for the historian,—a lesson which many modern writers have overlooked to their disadvantage.

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CHAPTER III
THE METHODS OF THE HISTORIANS

It is a curious fact, a seeming paradox, that the first two great histories ever written—the histories, namely, of Herodotus and Thucydides—should stand out pre-eminently as types of two utterly different methods of historical writing. Herodotus, “the Father of History,” wrote with the obvious intention to entertain. There is no great logicality of sequence in his use of materials; he simply rambles on from one subject to another with little regard for chronology, but with the obvious intention everywhere to tell all the good stories that he has learned in the course of his journeyings. It would be going much too far to say that there is no method in his collocation of materials, but what method he has is quite generally overshadowed and obscured in the course of presentation. Thus, for example, he is writing the history of the Persian wars, and he has reached that time in the history of Persia when Cambyses comes to the throne and prepares to invade Egypt. The mention of Egypt gives him, as it were, the cue for an utterly[10] new discourse, which he elaborates to the extent of an entire book, detailing all that he has learned of Egypt itself, its history, its people, and their manners and customs, without, for the most part, referring in any way whatever to Cambyses. He returns to the Persian king ultimately, to be sure, and takes up his story regardless of the digression, and seemingly quite oblivious of any incongruity in the fact of having introduced very much more extraneous matter in reference to Egypt than the entire subject matter proper of the Persian Empire. The method of Herodotus was justified by the results. There is every reason to believe that he was enormously popular in his own time,—as popularity went in those days,—and he has held that popularity throughout all succeeding generations. But it has been said of him often enough that this work is hardly a history in the narrower sense of the word; it is a pleasing collection of tales, in which no very close attempt is made to discriminate between fact and fiction, the prime motive being to entertain the reader. As such, the work of Herodotus stands at the head of a class which has been represented by here and there a striking example throughout all succeeding times.

Xenophon’s Anabasis, detailing the story of Cyrus the Younger and his ten thousand Greek allies, is essentially a history of the same type. It differs radically, to be sure, from Herodotus, in that it holds with the closest consistency to a single narrative, scarcely giving the barest glimpses into any other field than that directly connected with the story of the ten thousand. But it is like Herodotus in the prime essential that its motive is to entertain the reader by the citation of the incidents of a venturesome enterprise. Xenophon does indeed pause at the beginning of the second book long enough to pronounce a eulogy upon the character of Cyrus,—a eulogy that is distinctly the biased estimate of a friend, rather than the calm judgment of a critical historian. But this aside, Xenophon, philosopher though he is, concerns himself not at all with the philosophy of the subject in hand. He quite ignores the immoral features of the rebellion of Cyrus against his brother. Indeed, it seems never to occur to him that this fratricidal enterprise has any reprehensible features, or could be considered in any light other than that of a commendable proceeding of which a throne was the legitimate goal. Doubtless the very fact of this banishment of the philosophical from the work of Xenophon has been one source of its great popularity, for, as every one knows, Xenophon shares with Herodotus the credit of being the most widely read of classical authors. It would be quite aside from the present purpose to emphasise the opinion that the intrinsic merit of Xenophon’s work does not fully justify this popularity. It suffices here to note the fact that this famous work of the successor of Herodotus belongs essentially to the same class with the work of the master himself.

Of the Roman historians doubtless the one most similar to Herodotus in general aim was Livy. The author of the most famous history of Rome does not indeed make any such excursions into the history of outlying nations, as did Herodotus, but he details the history of his own people with an eye always to the literary, rather than to the strictly historical, side; transmitting to us in their best form that series of beautiful legends with which all succeeding generations have been obliged to content themselves in lieu of history proper. There is little of philosophical thought, little of search for motives, in such history-writing as this. It is essentially the art of the story-teller applied to the facts and fables of history.

Returning now to Thucydides, we have illustrated, as has been said, an utterly different plan and motive. Thucydides does indeed tell the story[11] of the Peloponnesian War; tells it, moreover, with such wealth of detail as no other historian of antiquity exceeded, and few approached. But in addition to narrating the plain facts, Thucydides searches always for the motives. He gives us an insight into the causes of events as he conceives them. He is obviously thinking more of this phase of the subject than of the mere recital of the facts themselves. It is the philosophy of history, rather than the story of history, that appeals to him, and that he wishes to make patent to the reader.

Only two or three other writers of the entire classical period whose works have come down to us followed Thucydides with any considerable measure of success in this attempt to write history philosophically; the two most prominent exponents of this method being the Greek Polybius, who told the story of Rome’s rise to world power, and Tacitus, the famous author of the Roman Annals and of the earliest history of the German people. These three examples—Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus—stand out at once in refutation of a claim which might otherwise be made that philosophical, or, if one prefers, didactic, historical composition is essentially a modern product. But for these exceptions one might be disposed to make a sweeping generalisation to the effect that the old-time history was a collection of tales intended to entertain the reader, and that the strictly modern historical method aims at instruction rather than at entertainment. Such generalisations, however, assuming, as they do, that the entire trend of human thought has fundamentally changed within historical times, are sure to be faulty. Quite possibly it may be true to say that the earliest historians tended as a class to write entertaining narratives rather than philosophical histories; and to say, on the other hand, that nineteenth century historians as a class have reversed the order of motives: but it must not be forgotten that our judgment here is based upon a mere fragment of the entire output of ancient historians. We have already noticed, in another connection, that the names of some hundreds of Greek writers have been preserved to us solely through a single anthological collection or two; and now, speaking of the historical works, it must be remembered that a vast number of these have perished altogether. Whole companies of historians are known to us only by name, and there is every reason to suppose that considerable other companies that once existed and wrote works of greater or less importance have not left us even this memento. The scattered fragments of Greek historical works that have come down to us, dissociated from any considerable part of their original context, fill three large volumes of the famous Didot collection of Greek classics, as edited by K. O. Müller; some hundreds of authors being represented.

We have noted that all the predecessors of Herodotus were blotted out, chiefly, perhaps, by the excellence of the work of Herodotus himself. Similarly the entire histories of Alexander the Great, written by his associates and contemporaries and his successors of the ensuing century, have without exception perished utterly.

Doubtless the excellence of the work of Arrian, which summarised and attempted to harmonise the contents of the more important preceding histories of Alexander, was responsible for the final elimination of the latter. One can hardly refer too often to that intellectual gantlet of the middle ages, which all classical literature was called upon to pass, and from which only here and there a work emerged. It is almost pathetic to consider the number of works that made their way heroically almost through this gantlet, only to succumb just before achieving the goal. One knows,[12] for example, that there was a work of Theopompus on later Grecian affairs, in fifty odd books, which was extant in the ninth century, as proved by the summary of its contents made then by a monk, but of which no single line is in existence to-day. Even the works that have come down to us in a less fragmentary condition have not usually been preserved entire in any single manuscript, but, as presented to us now, are patched together from various fragments, preserved often in widely separated collections. The explanation is that the copying of a manuscript of great length was a somewhat heroic task, and that hence the copyist would often content himself with excerpting a single book from a work which he would gladly have reproduced entire but for the labour involved.

The point of all this in our present connection is that we know the historians of antiquity very imperfectly, and that hence we are almost sure to misjudge them as a class when we attempt generalisations concerning them. In the very nature of the case, the historian who told a good story in a pleasing style stood a far better chance of being perpetuated through the efforts of copyists, than did the philosophical historian, however profound, who put forward his theories at the expense of the narrative proper. Making all due allowance for this, however, it can hardly be in doubt that the last century and a half has seen a remarkable development of the scientific spirit in its application to the work of the historian, and that the average historical work of the nineteenth century is philosophically on a far higher plane than the average historical work of antiquity. If we were to attempt to characterise the most recent phases of historical composition, we should, perhaps, not go far afield in saying that in regard to history-writing, as in regard to many other subjects, this is pre-eminently the age of specialists. In recent years no historical work could hope for any large measure of recognition among historians, unless it were based upon personal investigation of the most remote sources bearing upon the period that could be made accessible. The recent period has been pre-eminently a time of the searching out of obscure or forgotten records; the unburying of old letters and state papers; the delving into hitherto neglected archives; and the critical analysis of the conflicting statements of alleged authorities previously accessible.

The work began prominently—if any intellectual movement may properly be said to have an explicit beginning—with Gibbon and Niebuhr; it was continued by Grote and Mommsen and George Cornewall Lewis and Clinton, and the host of more recent workers, whose specific labours will claim our attention as we proceed. Naturally enough, since each generation of specialists builds upon the labours of all preceding generations, the work has become more and more minute and hair-splitting with each succeeding decade. Gibbon, specialist though he was, covered a period of a thousand years of European history, and left scarcely anything untouched that falls properly within that period. Niebuhr specialised on the few centuries of early Roman history, but his comprehensive view reached out also to Greece and to the Orient, and he was accounted a master over the whole range of ancient history. Mommsen’s efforts have followed the Roman Republic and Empire throughout the length and breadth of its wide domains, and over the whole period of its existence, as well as into all the ramifications of its political, commercial, and social life.

But there has been a tendency among most recent workers to confine their attention to a narrower field. Macaulay’s History of England attempts the really detailed history of only about seventeen years. Carlyle devotes six large volumes to the History of Frederick the Great, and such authorities as[13] Freeman and Stubbs and Gardiner and Gairdner gave years of patient research to the investigation of single periods of English history. The obvious result of all this minute and laborious effort is the piling up of a mass of more or less incoördinate details as to the crude facts of history, which only the specialist in each particular field can hope to master, and the remoter bearings of which in their relations to world history are not always clearly appreciable. It is rarely given to the same mind to have a taste or a capacity at once for minute research and for broad and accurate generalisation. Therefore much of the work of the specialist, admirable in its kind, must still be regarded rather as crude material than as a finished product. It is the work of the world historian to attempt to mass this crude material, to visualise it in its relations to other similar masses, and to build with it a unified structure of history, in which each portion shall appear in its proper relations to all the rest.

Let us turn for a moment to the work of the world historians of the past, and glance at the results of their various efforts to weld the individual history of men and of nations into a comprehensive history of mankind.

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CHAPTER IV
WORLD HISTORIES

No historian worthy of the name can narrate the events even of a limited period without at least an inferential reference to the world-historic import of these events. Just in proportion as one fails to take a sweeping general view, the force of his facts is weakened; any narrow period of history, on which the attention is fixed, assumes, for the time being, a disproportionate interest, and is necessarily seen quite out of perspective. It is only when the limited period is considered in reference to other periods that it can be made to assume anything like its proper status. Something of this has been understood by all writers from the earliest times, and accordingly we find that very few of the ancient authors failed to take at least a sweeping view of contemporaneous events, even when detailing specifically the incidents of a restricted period; and often, as in the case of Herodotus, the space devoted to the history of events not strictly cognate to the main story is quite out of proportion to that reserved for the main story itself. Thus in a certain sense the history of Herodotus is a world history, inasmuch as it deals more or less comprehensively with practically all nations known to the Greeks of that time. Thucydides, as we have seen, confines himself much more closely to a precise text; yet even he devotes an introductory book to a summary of the past history of the Greeks as a preparation for the full understanding of the Peloponnesian War.

But, after all, a somewhat sharp distinction should be drawn between histories such as these, which ostensibly describe the incidents of a particular period, and more comprehensive treatises, which set the explicit task of dealing with the history of all nations in all times.

Of the works of this latter class,—World Histories proper,—the oldest one that has come down to us is at the same time probably the most comprehensive in scope, and the most extensive in point of matter, of any that was written in ancient times. This is the so-called Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian. Diodorus was a Greek, a native of Sicily, who lived during the time of Julius Cæsar and of Augustus. He set himself the explicit task of[14] writing a comprehensive history of the world, and he devoted thirty years to the accomplishment of this task. This history, as originally written, comprised forty books, which treated of the entire history of mankind from the earliest times to the age of Augustus. Diodorus recognised the vagueness of early chronology, and he made no attempt to estimate the exact age of the world, but he computes the time covered by what he considers the historic period proper, in the following terms:

“According to Apollodorus, we have accounted fourscore years from the Trojan War to the return of Heraclides: from thence to the first olympiad, three hundred and twenty-eight years, computing the times from the Lacedæmonian kings: from the first olympiad to the beginning of the Gallic War (where our history ends) are seven hundred and thirty years: so that our whole work (comprehended in forty books) is an history which takes in the affairs of eleven hundred and thirty-eight years, besides those times that preceded the Trojan War.”

In his preface Diodorus further explains the exact scope of his work and the precise division in the books in the following words:

“Our first six books comprehend the affairs and mythologies of the ages before the Trojan War, of which the three first contain the barbarian, and the next following almost all the Grecian antiquities. In the eleven next after these, we have given an account of what has been done in every place from the time of the Trojan War till the death of Alexander. In the three and twenty books following, we have set forth all other things and affairs, till the beginning of the war the Romans made upon the Gauls; at which time Julius Cæsar, the emperor (who upon the account of his great achievements was surnamed Divus), having subdued the warlike nations of the Gauls, enlarged the Roman Empire, as far as to the British Isles; whose first acts fall in with the first year of the hundred and eightieth olympiad, when Herodes was chief magistrate at Athens. But as to the limitations of times contained in the work, we have not bound those things that happened before the Trojan War within any certain limits, because we could not find any foundation whereon to rely with any certainty.”

Of these forty books only fifteen have come down to us intact, namely, the first five, which carry down the history only to the Trojan wars, and books eleven to twenty, which cover the period from the invasion of Greece by Xerxes to the subjugation of Greece by the Romans. The remaining books are represented by considerable fragments, which, however, even in the aggregate, are insignificant in bulk as compared with the fifteen books that are preserved entire.

Considering the time when it was written, this work of Diodorus was really an extraordinary production, though there has been a tendency on the part of the modern critic to dwell rather upon its defects than its merits. It has indeed become quite the fashion to speak of Diodorus as a weak-minded, prejudiced person, who gathered together materials for history from all sources indiscriminately, and gave them to the world, true and false together, quite unsifted by criticism. Such an estimate, however, does Diodorus a very great injustice, as the briefest perusal of his work must suffice to demonstrate. Indeed, it is perhaps not saying too much to assert that one would be nearer the truth were he to accept an estimate by Pliny, who affirms that Diodorus was the first of the Greeks who wrote seriously and avoided trifles. That Diodorus did write seriously, his work clearly testifies; that he largely avoided trifles, is shown by the mass of matter which he crowded into a comparatively small space; and that he was far from[15] using his materials without exercising selective judgment, should be evident to any one who scans these materials themselves. It is quite true that he made many mistakes. He sometimes accepted as fact what was only fable, his chronologies are not always secure, his narratives of events not always photographically accurate. But consider the task he had set himself. He was endeavouring to write a history of the entire world so far as known in his day and generation, including within the scope of his narrative all the leading events of all the nations of the globe as known in that day. No man can perform such a task, even in this day of multiplied records and edited authorities, without making mistakes.

Whoever attempts to write history philosophically is brought, sooner or later, face to face with the fact that all historical records are woven through and through with fiction. To separate the threads of truth from the threads of fable is the task of critical judgment. It will be perfectly clear to any one who considers the case, that in making such selection the historian of any generation must be biased and influenced by the prejudices and preconceptions of his time. From such prejudices and preconceptions Diodorus was, of course, not free. He looked out upon the world with eyes of the first century B.C., not with eyes of the twentieth century A.D. That century, no less than this,—perhaps not more than this,—was an age of faith and superstition; but the faith of that time was not the faith of this time; the superstitions of the Greek and Roman were not our superstitions. They were a credulous people; we are a credulous people: but the exact type of their credulity differed in many ways from the type of our credulity.

In judging Diodorus, then, one must judge him as a Roman of the first century B.C., not as a European of the twentieth century A.D. And if we bear this in mind, we shall find, after scanning his pages, that Diodorus was by no means marked among his fellows by simple credulity of the unquestioning type which accepts whatever is told it without subjecting it to criticism. Diodorus, to be sure, tells us fabulous tales as to the origin of the world and the creation of its various peoples; but he explicitly forewarns us that he tells these tales, not as matters of his own belief, but in order to make an historical record of the opinions current among the different nations themselves as to their own origin.

These tales seem to us fabulous, grotesque, absurd; but we have no reason to doubt that many of them seemed equally mythical to Diodorus himself; and modern criticism should not forget that there is one other myth tale of the creation of the world and the origin of a particular race, which, had Diodorus known it, he would doubtless have narrated with the rest, and viewed with the same scepticism which he shows towards the others, as being fabulous, grotesque, and absurd, but which would have been accepted by the critics of all Christendom, in every age prior to our own, as the authentic historical record of the actual creation of the earth, and as the true account of its chosen people.

In a word, modern criticism should bear in mind, when reproaching Diodorus and others like him for their credulity, that the accepted faith of nineteenth-century Europe would have seemed to Diodorus as absurd and fabulous and mythical as any tale which he has to tell us can seem to the twentieth-century critic.

And as to the mistakes of Diodorus in the more strictly historical portions of his narrative, these also must be viewed with a certain toleration by every candid critic when he reflects upon the vast preponderance of those[16] cases in which the records of Diodorus are worthy of the fullest credence. In considering these matters, it is very easy, indeed, to generate myths that befog our view of the true status of an ancient author. Thus, for example, it was once traditional to regard Thucydides as the most candid, just, and impartial historian who has ever lived; but it can hardly be in doubt that the real reason why this estimate has grown up about the name of Thucydides is the fact that, as Professor Mahaffy points out, Thucydides is the sole authority for the history of most of the period of which he treats. It has even been admitted by Müller that in the early portion of the first chapter of Thucydides, where he treats on Grecian history in general, and up to the Peloponnesian War, he does not manifest the same impartiality which distinguishes him in the later portions of his narrative. But it is precisely in this earlier chapter that Thucydides deals with events that are recorded by other historians. It is here, and for the most part here alone, that his story can be checked by data from other authors. Could we similarly check the story of the Peloponnesian War in general, it can hardly be in doubt that we should come across at least some discrepancies which would have tended materially to modify the almost idolatrous estimate of Thucydides that came to be, and long continued to be, unquestionably associated with his name.

Making the application of this thought to Diodorus, it is evident at once that the historian of a limited period of antiquity lays himself open to no such range of comparison as he who undertakes to write the history of the entire world. In the very nature of the case, such a writer pits himself against the whole company of specialists; and, after all, it is hardly surprising, should it be susceptible of proof, that in several, or all, fields there are specialists whose accuracy excels the accuracy of Diodorus in each particular field. Surely the comprehensiveness of his task must count for something in the estimate, and, when all this is taken into consideration, it may fairly be repeated that the general estimate of modern criticism has done but scant justice to the author of the first attempt ever made to write a complete and comprehensive history of the world.

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that in his use of authorities Diodorus sometimes showed a selective judgment that is entitled to the fullest praise. A notable instance is found in his treatment of that period of Grecian history following the Peloponnesian War, when the Spartans and the Thebans were contending for supremacy. It was treated by Xenophon in his Hellenica, and as Xenophon was actual witness of many of the events which he describes, the presumption would be that his authority for the period might be considered incontestable. But in point of fact, Xenophon, philosopher though he was and pupil of Socrates, was not above the influence of personal prejudice. He was a friend of Agesilaus, and his admiration for that hero, as well as his fondness for the Spartans in general, prejudiced his narrative to such an extent that he did very scant justice to the merits of the great Epaminondas. Indeed, were we to trust to Xenophon alone, the world never would have had in later times anything like a just appreciation of the merits of the great Theban, and since Xenophon’s account of this period is the only contemporary one that has been preserved, it was a rare chance, indeed, that preserved to posterity a just appreciation of the greatest of the Thebans, whom some critics are wont to consider the greatest of all the Greeks; and it is Diodorus whom we must thank for doing this historic justice to a great man whose merits might otherwise have been obscured by the personal prejudice of a contemporary historian.

[17]

Diodorus, in treating this period, chose as his authority, not Xenophon, but Aphorus. Just how he came to this decision is not known; it suffices that the decision was a good one. None but a prejudiced critic can doubt that in many other cases his judgment was equally perspicuous in selecting among divergent accounts the one of greatest verisimilitude.

A part of the relative neglect which has fallen to the lot of Diodorus may be ascribed to the manner of his handling. He threw his work into the form of annals, in which a chronological idea was predominant. He gives the history of a nation in a given year, and then turns aside to other nations, to follow the fortunes of each in turn over the same period. Necessarily, under such a treatment, the whole plan lacks continuity. One must break from one subject to another, must turn from Assyria to Egypt, from Greece to Rome, in order to follow the story through constantly broken chapters. Naturally, under such treatment, the reader’s interest flags. From a popular standpoint, such a treatment is clearly a mistake.

The plan of Herodotus, which took up the story of each nation, and carried it through a long period uninterruptedly, has many advantages; is infinitely more artistic. It is chiefly due to this treatment, rather than the actual phrasing of his story, that Herodotus has gained so much more universal fame than Diodorus; for in those parts of his history in which he does attempt a continuous narrative, Diodorus shows much skill as a story-teller. In the earlier portion of his work, that portion which, fortunately, has in the main been preserved to us, when dealing with what he regards as the fabulous history of the nations prior to the establishment of a fixed chronology, his narrative runs on continuously, suggesting in many ways that of the Father of History. It was so with his treatment of early Egypt, and with his even more interesting history of ancient Assyria. These parts alone of his work serve to make him one of the most important authors of antiquity whose writings have been preserved to us, and we shall have occasion to draw largely upon him for the history of this period.

What has just been said about the attitude of modern critics toward Diodorus must not be taken to imply that this earliest of great world historians has, on the whole, failed of an appreciative audience. The facts of the case amply refute such a supposition as this. An author writes to be read, and in the last resort the only valid criterion as to the value of his work is found in the preservation or neglect of that work by successive generations of readers.

Tested by this standard, very few of the ancient writers have obtained such a measure of appreciation as has been accorded to Diodorus. Something like three-fourths of what he wrote has been lost, it is true; but in fairly estimating the import of this, one must consider the bulk of what remains. The briefest comparison supplies us with some very interesting data. It appears that, of the entire series of the predecessors of Diodorus, no single historian has left us anything like a comparable bulk of extant matter. Only one predecessor in any field of literature, namely, Aristotle, greatly exceeds him in this regard, and a single other writer, Plato, about equals him. Turning to the contemporaries of Diodorus and to his successors in the use of the Greek language, a similar result is shown. A single writer exceeds him in output. This is Plutarch, the biographer and philosopher rather than historian proper. No other Greek writer in any field equals Diodorus, though two historians, Dion Cassius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are within hailing distance. When one reflects on the actual labour implied by the preservation of any manuscript throughout the long[18] generations of the middle ages, these data speak volumes for the aggregate judgment passed upon the work of Diodorus by posterity. Of the long list of Greek historians,—a list mounting far into the hundreds, as proved by fragmentary remains,—only three as ancient as Diodorus have fared better than he, these three being Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. But the entire bulk of the works of these three writers does not so very greatly exceed the bulk of the extant writings of Diodorus. The works of Herodotus and Thucydides together do not comprise more matter than is contained in books eleven to twenty of Diodorus, which are preserved en bloc.

It would, of course, be absurd to imply that the mere bulk of the manuscripts preserved before the age of printing is a test of the value of an ancient author’s work; but, on the other hand, bearing in mind always the labour employed in the production of a single copy of a large work, it would be equally absurd to deny that the bulk of manuscripts has a certain bearing upon the value of the matter which they preserve. No doubt many a scribe would be deterred from starting out to copy manuscript by the great bulk of the work, and where he had no great preference, would be influenced by this alone to choose a smaller book. Again, doubtless many a scribe wearied of his task in the case of the more ponderous works, and gave it up after copying a few books. This common-sense explanation no doubt accounts for the fact that quite generally the earlier books rather than the later ones of works that have come down to us in a fragmentary condition are the ones preserved. Had Herodotus and Thucydides written forty books instead of eight or nine, it is very unlikely that even their genius would have sufficed to preserve the entire number. The case of Livy, whose work, despite the beauty of its style, has come down to us so sadly mutilated, sufficiently sustains this supposition. It is nothing against the merit of Diodorus, then, to reflect that half his work is lost; the wonder is rather that so much of it has been preserved.

We have dwelt thus at length upon the work of Diodorus because it is a work that may be taken as in many ways representative of world histories in general. Certainly it was by far the greatest world history produced in antiquity, of the exact merits of which we have any present means of judging. Indeed, there is only one other world history that has come down to us, and this, the work of Justin, is in itself only an abridgment of the writing of another author, Trogus Pompeius. Considering when it was written, this work of Trogus, if we may judge from the abridgment, was an admirable production, and the abridgment itself is of great value in throwing light on some periods that otherwise are not well covered by extant documents. As a whole, however, it is a compendium of history rather than a comprehensive work like that of Diodorus. Of the works of the other world historians of antiquity it is impossible to speak with any measure of certainty. Polybius accredited Aphorus with being the only man who had written a world history before his day. It is known that Aphorus lived in the fifth century B.C., and that he was a fellow-pupil of another historian, Theopompus, in the famous school of Isocrates at Athens; but his work is only known to us through inadequate fragments and the indirect quotations of other authors. The same is true of the works of Theopompus just referred to, and of Timæus, another Greek whose writing had something of world historic comprehensiveness. But, even had these works been preserved, it may well be doubted whether any one of them would compare favourably with the great history of Diodorus, which must stand out for all time as the greatest illustration of the writing of world history in antiquity.

[19]

Diodorus, as we have seen, brought his work down to the time of the Gallic wars of Cæsar. There are references in his writing which imply that he lived well into the time of Augustus. He probably died not long before the beginning of the Christian era.

No Greek of later time and no Roman of any period produced a work that supplanted the history of Diodorus, though most of the Byzantine historians produced chronicles, many of which had more or less aspect of world history in epitome. Several of these have been preserved, but no one thinks of comparing them with the work of the older writer. The chronological work of Eusebius, however, deserves a word of special mention. It was a mere epitome of world history, but a relatively comprehensive one, and one which, through the loss of more pretentious works, has come to be of great value to the modern historian. It was written originally in Greek, but the most important copy of it that has come down to us is, curiously enough, an Armenian translation. It is the Latin translation of this Armenian manuscript that is the work usually referred to by modern historians in speaking of Eusebius. The encyclopædia of history compiled for Constantine Porphyrogenitus, to which reference has already been made, must also be mentioned as a world history of real importance. It was based almost exclusively upon Greek authors, who were quoted at length, with such abbreviations or modifications as were made necessary in adjusting the various texts to one another. As a means of preserving the work of numerous important Greek historians this collection had the utmost value, but, unfortunately, it has come down to us in a much mutilated condition. During the Byzantine period the minds of would-be historians of the Western world were so occupied with ecclesiastical quarrels and the chronicles of local princes, that no one thought of world histories in the broader sense. We should be thankful that here and there a monk had interest and energy enough to copy the ancient authors, and thus in part to preserve them. Considering the intellectual atmosphere of the time, the wonder is, not that so many of the pagan authors were lost, but rather that any of them were preserved. Yet there were occasional gleams of light, even in the so-called dark age. Such a one of peculiar interest to the English reader is found in the fact that King Alfred translated into Anglo-Saxon the compendious world history of Orosius, a work that otherwise would be but little known to fame, but which, thanks to its brevity of treatment, and to this very unusual distinction of translation into a “barbaric tongue,” no doubt served a most excellent purpose in giving to the Anglo-Saxons of the ninth century a glimpse of the events of ancient times.

The best guide to the historic point of view of the generations that ushered in what we are accustomed to think of as the modern period is furnished by the History of the World which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote toward the close of his life, late in the sixteenth century. Raleigh was not an historian from choice, but was led to his task as a diversion during the time of his imprisonment. The work as far as he completed it is in five books, the titles of which are instructive. First book, “In treating of the First Ages of the World, from the Creation to Abraham.” Second book, “Of the Times from the Birth of Abraham to the Destruction of the Temple of Solomon.” Third book, “From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Time of Philip of Macedon.” Fourth book, “From the Reign of Philip of Macedon to the Establishing of that Kingdom in the Race of Antigonus.” Fifth book,[20] “From the Settled Rule of Alexander’s Successors in the East, until the Romans (prevailing over all) made Conquest of Asia and Macedon.”

It will appear that Raleigh did not carry his history beyond the early Roman period, yet, even so, it is a very bulky book, comprising more than eight hundred enormous quarto pages, an actual bulk far exceeding the extant portions of Diodorus. Raleigh very generally names his authorities in the margin, but even had he failed to do so, it would be easy to understand the sources on which he must have drawn. Obviously he depended largely upon the Bible for the early history of mankind, and for the rest he had access, no doubt, to the dozen or so of classical authors whose names we have had occasion to mention again and again. Naturally enough, the pages of Raleigh seem archaic to the modern reader, yet passages are not wanting which show the shrewd practical insight of the courtier and statesman. As a whole, the work had sufficient interest to be reprinted in 1687, a century after the author’s death. Indeed, until this time there was practically no world history in the field in competition with Raleigh’s that had been written since classical times. It is a curious commentary on the life of the post-classical times and of the middle ages that between the work of Diodorus, written just before the beginning of the Christian era, and the work altogether similar in scope of Sir Walter Raleigh, written sixteen hundred years later, there was no world history produced that is strictly comparable to either. Nor did the seventeenth century produce any marked change in the situation as regards the literature of world history.

The true renaissance of history writing came with the eighteenth century. About 1730 an English publisher was led to notice the paucity of recent literature in this field, and to project a universal history of the widest scope. Such men as Archibald Bower, John Campbell, William Guthrie, George Sale, George Psalmanazar, and John Swinton were associated in the undertaking, and in the course of the following twenty years a long series of volumes dealing with all phases of universal history, except, curiously enough, the history of Great Britain, was brought to a close. A subsequent edition, modified and improved as regards the earlier volumes, and supplemented with an account of English history, was published toward the close of the eighteenth century, the editor being the famous Dr. Tobias Smollett. This work, the first important history of the world produced in modern times, excited great interest. It is odd to reflect in the light of more recent events that the work was translated into various European languages, including German. The production of this work was a notable achievement, but the various parts of the work had widely different degrees of merit. A competent German critic, writing about the middle of the nineteenth century, conceded that the parts of the universal history referring to antiquity were fairly well done, but noted that the treatment of the middle ages was superficial, and the treatment of modern history even worse.

Inasmuch as the history of antiquity has been very largely reconstructed within the past fifty years, it will be obvious that the universal history in question cannot now be regarded with other than an antiquarian interest. Nevertheless, it contains numberless descriptive passages, which are as historically accurate and as interesting to-day as they were when written.

The impulse to historical composition, of which this universal history is a monumental proof, found expression a little later in the great histories of Hume and Robertson and Gibbon. Thanks to these writers, England was easily in advance of all other countries at the close of the eighteenth century in the matter of historical composition. Indeed, as to world[21] histories she was first, without a second. Early in the nineteenth century, however, a great world history was produced in Germany. This was the work of Schlosser. In its earliest form this work was completed in 1824; it was a strictly technical production. But about twenty years later a pupil of Schlosser, under the direction of the author himself, elaborated a popular edition of the world history, which soon had an enormous circulation in Germany, and which in recurring editions still finds a multitude of readers. This work of Schlosser’s would probably have been translated into English were it not that the field had been preoccupied by another great universal history. This was the work which Dr. Lardner edited, and which began to appear in 1830, about a century after the inauguration of that first universal history in English to which we have just referred. Dr. Lardner’s work, like its English predecessor, was produced by a company of specialists; but it differed from the other in that each volume or set of volumes dealing with a period or country was written by a specialist whose authorship was acknowledged on the title-page, whereas the previous work had been altogether anonymous. In other words, it was essentially a collection of monographs, each by a more or less distinguished authority, which, in the aggregate, constituted a history of the world. The work as a whole comprised a large number of volumes. Needless to say the component parts were of varying merit; but as a whole the work was an excellent one, and many of the volumes still have value, though necessarily much of their contents is antiquated.

The production of the popular edition of Schlosser’s world history in Germany marked an epoch in this class of literature. Almost contemporaneously with this production several other world histories saw the light in Germany, and from that day to this world histories have come from the German press in unbroken succession. These are varied in scope, from the marvellously compressed and beautifully philosophical work of Rottock in four small volumes, published about 1830, to the gigantic Oncken series, which is just completed. In this list of German world histories the works of Bekker, of Leo, and of Weiss hold conspicuous places, in addition to those just named. But perhaps the most notable of all is the world history of Dr. George Weber. This work of Dr. Weber occupied the author during the best years of his life. It is in eighteen volumes, and occupied about twenty years in passing through the press. We shall have occasion to refer more at length to Dr. Weber’s work in another place, as well as to quote from it frequently. Suffice it here that Dr. Weber may justly be called the Diodorus of modern times, his work being certainly the most complete and comprehensive exposition of world history that has ever issued from a single pen.

One other world history of German origin must be mentioned as holding a place beside that of Weber. This is the work of Ranke. It is very different in plan from Weber’s, in some ways more philosophical, and often less detailed in its narrative of events. The author, recognised as almost the greatest of German historians, began the work late in life, and brought to bear upon it perhaps as full an equipment of historical knowledge in divers fields as any single man has ever attained. Unfortunately, he did not live to complete his work, which, as it stands, comes only to the close of the middle ages, and which, therefore, cannot be compared in its entirety with the completed work of Weber.

The most recent of all the great German world histories, the Oncken series, just referred to, is a work built essentially upon the plan of Dr. Lardner’s series of the early part of the century. Each volume of the Oncken series is written virtually as an independent work by an authority, and there[22] is no close bond between the various component parts of the structure, though doubtless an attempt was made on the part of the editor to have the various authors conform somewhat to the same scheme of treatment. The work comprises about fifty very large octavo volumes, being therefore the bulkiest, as it is the most recent, of world histories.

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CHAPTER V
THE PRESENT HISTORY

It is a singular fact that since the publication of Dr. Lardner’s series in the first half of the nineteenth century, no satisfactory attempt has been made to bring the entire story of the world’s history to the attention of the English reader in a single work. While the presses of Germany have sent out their never ending stream of world histories, the English-speaking world has remained utterly inactive, so that until now there has been no work in English less than half a century old that could pretend to compete with any one of the numerous German productions. Buckle’s work would, to some extent, have supplied the deficit had he lived to complete it, yet even his effort was aimed rather at philosophical generalisations regarding human evolution, than at a narrative of historical events.

If we attempt to explain this paucity of literature in so fascinating a field as that of world history, the solution is not far to seek: it is found in the very magnitude of the task. This is the age of specialists, and just in proportion as one appreciates the full meaning of special knowledge of any subject in its modern interpretation, must he feel the hopelessness of attempting to gain more than a general knowledge in a variety of fields. Yet something approaching the knowledge of the specialist should be brought to bear upon each period of history by any one who attempts to write a comprehensive history of the world. It is an appreciation of this fact that has led to the production of such a symposium as the Oncken series, just referred to, and contrariwise, it is the appreciation of the same fact that has led to the relative neglect of so admirable a work as that of Weber. The modern critic is disposed to feel that the writing of a really comprehensive world history in this age is a task beyond the capacity of any single man. When one considers the vast amount of research work in hitherto unexplored fields that is being carried on in every department of history, it becomes patent that no single mind can hope to cope at first hand with the ever increasing flood of special literature. In almost every department of history special bibliographies have been published of late years which are utterly bewildering, even to the specialist, in the wealth of material which they reveal.

To cite but a single instance, the bibliography of early English history, down to about the year 1485, as recently collated by Professor Gross, comprises a large volume of small type. It would be the work of a lifetime for any specialist to deal, even in a cursory way, with each and every one of the works cited in this list; yet this is only one little corner of the field which the world historian must cover. Obviously, then, the world historian, if he attempt personally to construct a narrative of the entire subject, must content himself with a more or less superficial glance at each field; his reading may indeed be wide, but it cannot by any possibility be exhaustive. Moreover, in the nature of the case, he must often read merely to gather material for the day’s task of writing, and no matter what his memory, he[23] will inevitably forget the greater part of the multitudinous details that he has dealt with. In the case of a man of such wide scholarship and such tenacity of purpose as Dr. Weber, it must be freely admitted that a view of the entire range of world history may be attained, which it would be rank injustice to pronounce really superficial. Yet even such a worker as Weber must have depended very largely upon second-hand epitomes for his facts. He cannot have read at first hand more than a fraction of the authors upon whom he is obliged explicitly or inferentially to pass judgment. In a word, great as is the value of works of the class of which Weber’s is the finest example, such works must, in the very nature of the case, be content to be ranked as more or less successful compilations, lacking the authority which the modern critic is unwilling to vouchsafe to anything but strictly original work,—original work, that is, in the sense of work based upon a first-hand examination of the most remote authorities, the only sense in which the word “original” can properly be applied to any form of historical composition.

If we turn from world histories of the one-man type to those produced by a symposium of specialists, we are met with a quite different, but none the less insistent, series of inherent defects.

In the first place, the intrinsic defect of the one-man treatment is not altogether overcome, since specialism has nowadays been carried to such a stage that few men feel altogether at home outside a comparatively limited period, even of the history of a single nation. If, then, one man is asked to write the entire history of, let us say, the Greeks, he necessarily passes over ground that his special studies have not covered uniformly, and in certain periods he must feel himself more or less in the position of the general historian. It would, of course, be possible to meet this objection by having a sufficient number of writers, so that each limited period should be covered by a true specialist; but the great difficulty in such a scheme as this is the entire lack of harmony of view that must pertain to such a work.

A glance at the Oncken series will convince any one how very difficult it is to attain even approximately to a true perspective of world history under the symposial plan. Thus one finds in this series, to cite but a single illustration of disproportionate treatment, that various relatively insignificant periods of modern German history are allowed to fill bulky volumes where a true perspective would have relegated them to mere chapters. It is only from a very prejudiced modern standpoint that the history of Frederick II can be thought worth greater space than the entire history of the Greek world. Where such inconsistencies are permitted there is a danger that the alleged world history will become rather the history of a single nation in its relations to other nations, past and present, than an impartial presentation of the history of nations as a whole.

In the present work an attempt has been made to avoid the pitfalls of one-man treatment on the one hand, and of ill-adjusted specialist treatment on the other. We have made sure of presenting special knowledge by drawing upon the specialists of every field, and letting them present their information in their own words; but, at the same time, we have attempted to avoid the prejudiced view from which the specialist is least of all men free, by presenting the counter views of various students wherever there is failure of agreement among those best competent to judge.

The authorities on whom historial compositions are necessarily based, and who in other works are merely cited by name, or at most by volume and page reference, are here quoted in detail in their own words wherever practicable,[24] always with full credit to the author, and with exact reference to the work from which the excerpt is taken. Such authorities are quoted, not merely from histories in English, but from the entire range of historical writings of all ages. It is hoped that few important names are overlooked. The aggregate number of different works thus quoted (not merely cited) will be about one thousand. These quotations vary in length from illuminative paragraphs to excerpts of many pages, averaging perhaps about two thousand words each. Some fifteen hundred of such extensive quotations are made from foreign languages, and by far the greater number of these have been translated from the originals expressly for the present work, thus representing matter never before accessible to the reader of English. The languages represented in this list of important historical works of foreign origin include practically all the tongues of civilised nations, ancient and modern,—Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, and the entire range of European languages from Greek, Latin, and Russian to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, German, and Scandinavian. From all of these the original words of the various authors have been translated into the most literal English consistent with our idiom. It is speaking well within bounds to assert that seldom before has so varied an exposition of cosmopolitan thought been collected in a single work.

But these excerpts are not given as random references crowded into footnotes or appendices; they are woven into the text of the consecutive story of world history so that they themselves constitute the bulk of that story. Thus the history of Germany is mainly told in the words of German writers, that of France in the words of French historians. To avoid the prejudiced national view of history, however, the story of a nation thus told by the native historian is always subject to the corrective views of foreigners. Thus we gain both the sympathetic and the critical points of view. When the authorities are not agreed as to any important fact of history, or where there are important differences of opinion in estimating the influence of a great event or the real status of a famous character, reliance is not placed upon the estimate of a single historian, but counterviews are quoted, even though they may be directly contradictory, each, of course, being ascribed to its proper source.

To give unity to these various views and to weld the entire mass of matter into a consistent and comprehensive history of the world, original editorial passages are everywhere freely introduced as a part of the main narrative, forming indeed the warp of the whole, and serving to elucidate and harmonise the views of the authorities quoted. A feature of the original editorial matter is that it comprises, first and last, critical estimates of the work of important historians of every age, informing the reader as to the status—even to the particular prejudice and bias—of the authority he is asked to consult. Thus the novice is everywhere placed somewhat on a par with the special student in his estimate of the authorities. Where conflicting views are quoted of nominally equal authority, the reader is given data on which to base an intelligent personal opinion as to the probabilities. Moreover, elaborate additional bibliographies of works that may advantageously be consulted are everywhere given, and these in the aggregate constitute such a critical bibliography of the entire range of historical compositions as cannot fail to interest even the general reader.

Our method of introducing critical bibliography, and the critical selection of the excerpts themselves, make it feasible to introduce quotations, not only from the latest authority in any field, but also from the great historians[25] of the past. Thus in the case of ancient history, the classical authorities themselves are drawn upon wherever available,—Herodotus for the Persian wars, Thucydides for the Peloponnesian wars, Xenophon for later Greek history, Sallust, Cæsar, Livy, Dionysius, Dion Cassius, Tacitus, Ammianus, and the rest for Roman history; and so on indefinitely. Herodotus describes the battle of Thermopylæ; Arrian tells of the glories of Alexander; Dionysius relates the story of Virginia; Polybius shows us Hannibal crossing the Alps; Appian pictures the fall of Carthage; Josephus the fall of Jerusalem; Zosimus the fall of Palmyra. In this way a mass of first-hand matter, much of it hitherto absolutely inaccessible to the reader of English, and much more only to be found in rare and costly editions, is put within the reach of the least scholarly. But—what is most essential—such matter as this is not merely given by itself unsupported. It is supplemented by the verdicts of the latest investigators in the various fields covered. Thus, to cite but a single instance, in the history of early Greece, not merely Herodotus, Thucydides, Diodorus, Pausanias, and other ancient authorities are quoted, but the long range of modern students as well, from Mitford, Thirlwall, and Grote to Curtius, Bezold, Busolt, Geddes, Schliemann, Mahaffy, Bury, and in general the latest investigators in the field of classical archæology.

Thanks to this system of checking ancient accounts with editorial criticism and other recent expert evidence, it is even practicable to avail ourselves sometimes of the writings of men who are not primarily historians, but who wrote, as so many other great authors have done, most important incidental essays on historical subjects; thus matter in the highest degree picturesque and interesting is often presented in a manner which the technical historian, however great his scientific authority, is seldom able to imitate.

Another peculiar merit of this system is that it enables us to preserve specimens of the work of a large coterie of historians, whose influence was great and whose writings were formerly standard, but whose books, as a whole, have been superseded by more recent works. Some of the classical authors are cases in point. A few of these are indeed read by students in colleges everywhere, but the great bulk of them are as utterly unknown to the average reader as if they had never existed. Who reads Pausanias, or Diodorus, or Polybius, or Appian, or Dion Cassius, or Dionysius, or Ælianus, or Arrian, or Quintus Curtius, or Zosimus? Yet these men are the only original authorities left us in many fields of ancient history. Their works are the sources which moderns can do little more than paraphrase in writing of those times. Surely, then, it is worth while to go to these authors themselves and hear their story at first hand, applying to it the corrective judgment of later criticism, rather than to depend upon the mere paraphrase of some modern compiler.

Much the same argument applies to parts of the work of once famous historians of more recent times: such historians as Hume, Mitford, Thirlwall, and a host of others. Their work, as a whole, can no longer be commended to the student who is to confine himself to a single authority, for in many parts their writings have been superseded; yet there are other parts of their work that are to-day as valuable as when they were written, and it seems regrettable that a great name should drop from public recognition merely because the sweep of progress has dethroned it from supremacy. It is inevitable that the present should always loom large before mankind, and that egotism should stamp with peculiar force the importance of the Recent.[26] “Each generation abandons the ideas of its predecessors like stranded ships,” says Emerson. Yet it must not be forgotten that posterity often plays strange tricks with reputations. Herodotus was held up to ridicule some centuries after his death by a “False Plutarch,” who is only known now because of his attack upon the master historian, while the work criticised, though for some generations looked on with suspicion, is as fully appreciated, after more than two thousand years, as it can have been in the day when it was written.

Similarly, the judgments of our own age of specialism may be reversed by posterity; and in any event it would be regrettable if a once important historical work should be quite forgotten. Yet such a fate threatens work of every grade. Müller’s collection of the fragments of Greek historians gives mere bits from the writings of more than five hundred authors about whom nothing is known—not even the exact age in which they lived—beyond the fact that they wrote works of which these fragments are the only mementoes. Could any page of manuscript of any one of these authors be recovered, it would to-day be considered worth many times its weight in gold.

Precisely the same process of decay is gradually removing the evidences of the historical labours of the writers of recent generations even now. The multiplication of books by the printing-press makes the process a trifle slower, perhaps; but it is no less sure. A goodly number of works that were famous half a century ago are now absolutely inaccessible to the would-be purchaser: the great book markets of Paris, Berlin, and London cannot secure or supply them. A few copies of these works are still extant in private collections and public libraries, but the fate of these is assured. Libraries are constructed to be burned. Some day a lick of flame will wipe out the last copy of any work issued only in a single edition, and the author will become thenceforth merely a name and a memory; or if, perchance, some latter-day Suidas or Stobæus has quoted a sentence from him, such sentence will be treasured in catalogues of fragments of eighteenth and nineteenth century historians. For many such an author, the present work may perform the function of Suidas or Stobæus, for a long list of these obsolescent writers will be found represented in our pages,—not always preserved for their antiquarian interest indeed, but quoted in regard to events concerning which their authority is still standard, and because it is believed that, in the cases selected, their treatment has not been excelled by any more recent performance; sometimes, on the other hand,—but more rarely,—quoted because of the quaintness of their diction, because of the archaic cast of thought through which they reflect the spirit of their times, or because of their sheer whimsicality.

But while emphasising the catholicity of taste that judges matter on its own merits, excluding nothing simply because it is old, it must be emphasised also that in the main such selection leads to the inclusion of a preponderance of recent matter. Each generation builds upon the shoulders of the last, and the work, as a whole, is progressive. So we go not merely to the latest books, but also to the recent numbers of periodicals, the publications of learned societies and the like. And to put the cap-sheaf to modernity, the greatest living experts in each field have contributed original essays and characterisations expounding the latest developments. These contributions, in which master workers summarise the results of years of investigation, will be found not the least valuable part of our work.

Most that has been said thus far has tended to emphasise the variorum or anthological features of our work. But it must be evident that there is another and quite different point of view from which our historical structure[27] may be considered. This point of view regards our history not as a compilation—an anthology—but as an altogether new and original work. A moment’s consideration will show how fully justified we are in referring to this aspect of the subject. For it is obvious to the least attentive consideration that the intrinsic materials which make up the story of history might be never so abundant, never so valuable, without in the least presupposing that the history composed of them will be an artistic or valuable work; any more than an abundant supply of bricks, marble, and mortar necessarily determines the building of a beautiful edifice. The materials are, indeed, prerequisites; but an intelligent manipulation of the materials is at least equally essential. There must be an architect to plan the structure as a whole, and artists and artisans to select and manipulate the materials in accordance with the plan, or the result will be, not an edifice, but a brick-heap.

Since, then, we have dwelt at some length upon the fundamental materials of our historical structure, it is necessary that we should be equally explicit regarding the shaping of the architectural design—to hold to our figure—in accordance with which the materials have been first selected, and secondly amalgamated with other materials;—each stone not only selected of proper quality and size, but chiselled and polished to fit its proper niche.

The simile of an architect constructing a building, cheap and trite as it is, cannot well be dispensed with if we are to give the reader a vivid picture of our method of construction. It must be understood that whether our result be good or bad, there is nothing fortuitous, nothing haphazard about it. We did not start groping blindly for material, hoping to see an artistic structure form itself out of chaos. Our entire plan was as fully preconceived as the plan of any other architect. First, the kind of structure was determined on: in other words the scope of our subject,—world history; the entire sweep of important human events from the earliest times to the present day. Secondly, the approximate size of the projected structure was determined—its ground surface, its height, its total mass; or, speaking in the terminology of our specific structure, the number of volumes, the size of each volume, the total mass or number of pages involved.

Next the proportions of the structure, the number of floors and of rooms to each floor; the relative size and dimensions of the various departments; or, in book terms, the proportionate number of volumes or pages to be given to each important department of history: so many volumes to the Old Orient; so many to the Classical World; so many to the Middle Ages; so many to the important divisions of modern history.

All this, let it be repeated, was accurately predetermined before a single block of material was explicitly selected for the building. It does not follow that absolutely no changes have ever been made in the original plan—no architect perhaps ever made a building of which this was quite true; but it is true that the original plan was so carefully thought out, so well considered, that the changes are utterly insignificant in comparison with the unmodified portions of the structure. This point should be emphasised and clearly borne in mind, because upon it depends a large measure of our confidence that we have produced a structure not without artistic and correct proportions. It was the predetermination of the proportions, and this alone, that could control the enthusiasm of unrestrained specialism, and keep to anything like a true historical perspective. Over and over again it has been proved that the special worker, when he came to focus upon a given period, was in the position of a microscopist, viewing his wonderfully interesting microcosm. All the rest of the world shut out for[28] the moment, the little circle of the microscopic field, which may be in reality one hundredth of an inch in diameter, looms before the view at an angle which literally makes it seem to eclipse the world itself.

And so the historical delver, when he finds himself in the midst of the literature on any period whatever—be it a mere historical mole-hill—finds himself surrounded by a heap of literary bricks which shuts out the very mountain ranges of history from his vision. At once he demands—feels that he must have—space for his magnified mole-hill; and it is only the predetermined editorial restrictions that keep him from filling entire volumes with fascinating stories about some petty kingdom which, from the world-historical standpoint, is entitled to pages only. It is a conservative estimate of the facts to assert that there is no period of our history for which ten times the amount of material has not been garnered than could possibly be used in extenso. The chart of the architect has lain always open upon the editorial desk, and rule and compass have been ever ready to restrain and check the over-enthusiasm of the worker whose zeal would otherwise lead him to present megaliths where the specification called for, and the plan permitted, only tiny bricks.

As to whether the plans of the architect were intrinsically good; whether the specification called for bricks where bricks were logically needed, and for megaliths in their proper place—these are questions that will not be entered on here. But a word may be permitted as to the ruling motives which have dominated the conception, and which, it is hoped, have never been lost sight of. These ruling motives are two: first, the hope of attaining a high standard of historical accuracy in the most critical acceptance of the term; secondly, the desire to retain as much as possible of human interest in the broadest and best sense of the words. To attain the first of these ends it is necessary to be free from prejudice, to have unflagging zeal in collecting testimony, to have scientific and critical acumen in weighing evidence; to attain the second end it is essential that kindred faculties should be applied not to the facts of history but to the literary presentations of these facts, that the good and true story may not be spoiled in the telling.

The desire to be free from all prejudice in the judgment of historical facts is, then, the key-note of all our philosophy of historical criticism; and the desire to retain interest—human interest—is the key-note of our philosophy of historical composition.

To attain either end, what perhaps is most required is catholicity of sympathies. There must be no race prejudice, no national prejudice. There must be no attempt to blacken or whiten historical characters, in correspondence with the personal bias. There must be no special pleading for or against any form of government, any racial propensity, or any individual deed. In a word, there must be freedom from prejudice in every field,—except indeed that prejudice in favour of the broad principles of right, regarding which all civilised nations of every age have been in virtual agreement. But the deeds, the motives, the superstitions of all times and of all races must be viewed, so far as such a thing is possible, through the same clear atmosphere of impartiality. As between Egyptian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Hindoo, Persian, Mongul—he who would produce a world history of truly catholic scope should have no inherent prejudice or preconception.

Equally must there be freedom from prejudice regarding various classes of ideas. “Whatever concerns mankind is of interest to me,” must be the editorial motto. Some persons are interested only in military events, in battles, treaties, and the like; others care only for constitutional and[29] governmental affairs; yet others think most of literature and of art, or of science. But the editorial spirit of a world history should show a catholicity of taste that is receptive of each and all of these. Xerxes at Thermopylæ, and Æschylus writing his tragedy “The Persians”; Alexander mourning for Hephæstion, and Phidias building the Parthenon; Augustus Cæsar disputing the mastery of the world with Antony, and Dionysius telling of the myths of early Rome; Richard of the lion heart prosecuting a crusade, and Dante vitalising the Italian language; each and all of these and kindred topics up and down the scroll of history should equally, each in proportion to its relative influence, excite the sympathetic attention of the historian. With the same zeal he should tell of the alleged iniquities of a Messalina or a Catherine de’ Medici and of the noble self-abnegation of a Cornelia; of the self-seeking of a Cæsar and of the self-abnegation of a Cincinnatus or a St. Louis. With sound common-sense for a guide, he should strive to avoid on the one hand the over-credulity of the untrained mind, and on the other the dogmatic scepticism that so often perverts the judgment of the specialist.

But what then, it may be asked, of the moral of our story—of our drama? Shall we be content to present the bare facts, and leave their philosophical interpretation to chance? To this it may be replied, that in the minds of most of us a profound philosophical idea is one that accords with our own preconception;—other views are superficial, perverse, or obviously mistaken. Hence a wise interpreter of history will be extremely chary of putting forward his own more or less dogmatic interpretations of the events he relates. It does not follow that no opinion can ever be expressed; indeed, a tacit expression of opinion is implied in the selection of almost every excerpt. But witnesses from all sides must be given an impartial hearing in any case where a clear balance of evidence is not attainable; and where the evidence is demonstrative it must be presented with all fairness, and without reservation or innuendo, regardless of its apparent bearing.

Fortunately the study of world history in itself tends to make for precisely such impartiality. He who has attentively followed the story of the rise and fall of nations will have learned that human nature is everywhere at its foundation much the same; that no race, no nation, no individual even is ideally good or totally bad; that the Past has always been a Golden Age for the pessimist, the Future always utopian for the dreamer, and that a broad optimism regarding the Present—a belief that on the whole the conditions of any given time are about as good as the character of the time permits—is, perhaps, the safest philosophy of living.

In the main, then, we may rest content with the conviction that, however unobtrusive our philosophy, the great lessons of history will not fail to make themselves felt by any attentive reader of these pages. We greatly mistake the purport of the story if it does not on the whole make for broader views, for truer humanitarianism, for higher morals, personal and communal;—in a word, for better citizenship in the fullest and broadest meaning of the term. Indeed, to attain the plane of the best citizenship, historical studies are absolutely essential. No one can have a competent judgment regarding the affairs of his own country without such studies; no one is a fair judge of the political principles of the party he supports or of the one that he opposes, who has not prepared himself by a study of the political systems of the past. “Had I begun earlier and spent thirty years in reading history,” said Schiller, “I should be far different and a far better man than I am.” Echoing these words, we may say that the outlook for every constitutional government would be brighter if every youth and every man who exercises[30] or is about to exercise the responsibilities of a voter, and every woman whose advice aids or stimulates a father, brother, husband, or son towards the performance of his civic duties, could spend not thirty years, let us say, but as many weeks in studying the history of nations. Little fear that the student who has got such a start as this would willingly stop there. He would have gained enough of insight to be keenly interested, and it would require no urging to send him on; for the panorama of history, once we gain a little insight into it as it unfolds before us its never ending variety of scenes, can hardly be viewed otherwise than with unflagging interest; unless indeed the view is befogged by the atmosphere through which it is presented. To prevent such befogging,—to present the story through a clear medium,—requires only that the narrative shall be true to the facts in its presentation of topics of real importance. This is what we had in mind when we said that interest—human interest—is the key-note of our philosophy of historical composition. It is the editorial conviction that attention, based upon interest, is the foundation of mental development. A literary work that lacks interest, might, indeed, subserve a useful purpose, but the scope of its influence is curtailed from the outset if the reader must go to it as a task and not as to a recreation. Interest breaks down the barriers between work and play. Interest fixes attention, and fixed attention is the basis of memorising.

Let it freely be asserted, then, that in the selection of material for our work the principle acted on has been that, other things being equal, the best account of any historical event is the most picturesque and entertaining account,—for what, after all, does picturesqueness imply, except an approach to the vivid reproduction of the actualities? Written words are intended to be read, and any writer who, like Polybius, despises the literary graces must expect to be despised in turn, or, at least, neglected. Properly presented, the narrative of history should have all the breathless interest of a novel,—for what is so fascinating as a true story from human life? In the present work an attempt is made to raise history towards the level of fiction in point of interest, without sacrificing anything of scientific accuracy. No account is given here merely because it is picturesque, to the exclusion of a truer narrative; but the preference is always given to the graphic story as against the dull, where the two have equal authority as to matters of fact. Further to enhance the vividness of presentation, pictures are everywhere introduced. There are thousands of these pictures in the aggregate, drawn from the most varied sources, and constituting, it is believed, one of the most remarkable series of historical illustrations ever collected.

All in all, then, one might describe our intention as the desire to dramatise the story of history,—for, again, what is dramatisation but the mimicry of life? Our various books and sections are the settings for the acts and scenes of the play, and it is hoped that, with the aid of the introductions by way of proem, and the pictures to aid the eye, the characters are made to move across the stage before the reader with something like the vividness of living actors. One cannot quite dare promise that there shall be no dull scenes, but it is hoped that, in the main, the play will be found to move lightly on, as with words spoken “trippingly upon the tongue.”

In particular, it is hoped that our dramatisation of history will present the events of the long play in something like a true perspective, the large events looming large in our story, the lesser ones forced into the background. As an aid to this treatment, tables of chronology are everywhere introduced before the curtain rises, if it be permissible to hold to our metaphor. These are virtually the lists of dramatis personæ. Even the minor characters will[31] be named here, though they act only as chorus, or prate a few lines in the play where the chief personages will dominate the situation as they dominated it in real life, and as they dominate it in the memory of posterity. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon—such figures will loom large in our drama of history; yet it will never be forgotten that the play is not a monologue. The minor actors will be given a fair hearing from first to last.

It follows from this that the main story of our history has to do with the deeds of men of action. But here at the very outset an important question may be raised: do the deeds of men of action then, after all, constitute the great events of history? An affirmative answer may be given with much confidence. Great men of action carve out the contour of history. High culture can only rise from soil fertilised by material prosperity. The swords of Leonidas, Themistocles, and Pausanias must prune the tree of civilisation before the flower of Periclesian culture can bloom at Athens. There are no names like Livy, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil in the annals of Rome before the conquests and the carnage of Marius, Sulla, and Cæsar. But let us hasten to add that the deeds of men of action can never be rightly understood unless they are considered in relation to the intellectual and social surroundings in which these men of action moved. In other words, the civilisation and culture of each succeeding period cannot be ignored. It will be found to be as fully treated here in all its phases as the limitations of space permit. It furnishes the atmosphere everywhere for our picture, or, if you prefer, the setting for our stage.

In a word, then, our work becomes, if its intent has been realised in actuality, a Comprehensive History of Human Progress in all departments of action and of thought, told dramatically and picturesquely, yet authoritatively, in the words of the great historical writers of every age. Recurring to our metaphor, it is the book of a veritable Drama of History; our unity of action being Historic Truth; our unity of time, the Age of Man; our stage, the World.

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[32]

BOOK II. A GLIMPSE INTO THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

A complete world history should, properly speaking, begin with the creation of the world as man’s habitat, and should trace every step of human progress from the time when man first appeared on the globe. Unfortunately, the knowledge of to-day does not permit us to follow this theoretical obligation. We now know that the gaps in the history of human evolution as accessible to us to-day, vastly exceed the recorded chapters; that, in short, the period with which history proper has, at present, to content itself, is a mere moment in comparison with the vast reaches of time which, in recognition of our ignorance, we term “prehistoric.” But this recognition of limitations of our knowledge is a quite recent growth—no older, indeed, than a half century. Prior to 1859 the people of Christendom rested secure in the supposition that the chronology of man’s history was fully known, from the very year of his creation. One has but to turn to the first chapter of Genesis to find in the margin the date 4004 B.C., recorded with all confidence as the year of man’s first appearance on the globe. One finds there, too, a brief but comprehensive account of the manner of his appearance, as well as of the creation of the earth itself, his abiding-place. Until about half a century ago, as has just been said, the peoples of our portion of the globe rested secure in the supposition that this record and this date were a part of our definite knowledge of man’s history. Therefore, one finds the writers of general histories of the earlier days of the nineteenth century beginning their accounts with the creation of man, B.C. 4004, and coming on down to date with a full and seemingly secure chronology.

Our knowledge of the world and of man’s history has come on by leaps and bounds since then, with the curious result that to-day no one thinks of making any reference to the exact date of the beginnings of human history,—unless, indeed, it be to remark that it probably reaches back some hundreds of thousands of years. The historian can speak of dates anterior to 4004 B.C., to be sure. The Egyptologist is disposed to date the building of the Pyramids a full thousand years earlier than that. And the Assyriologist is learning to speak of the state of civilisation in Chaldea some 6000 or 7000 years B.C. with a certain measure of confidence. But he no longer thinks of these dates as standing anywhere near the beginning of history. He knows that man in that age, in the centres of progress, had attained a high stage of civilisation, and he feels sure that there were some thousands of centuries of earlier time, during which man was slowly climbing through savagery and barbarism, of which we have only the most fragmentary record. He does not pretend to know anything, except by inference, of the[33] “dawnings of civilisation.” Whichever way he turns in the centres of progress, such as China, Egypt, Chaldea, India, he finds the earliest accessible records, covering at best a period of only eight or ten thousand years, giving evidence of a civilisation already far advanced. Of the exact origin of any one of the civilisations with which he deals he knows absolutely nothing. “The Creation of Man,” with its fixed chronology, is a chapter that has vanished from our modern histories.

Nevertheless, it is important to a correct understanding of the development of human thought, as well as of personal interest, to bear in mind the attitude of our predecessors in the field of historical writing, regarding this ever interesting problem of cosmogony. It was not alone the ancient Hebrews who thought that they had solved the problem. Indeed, as we shall see, the Hebrews were rather the purveyors than the originators of the story of cosmogony which they made current; and every other nation, when it had reached a certain stage of mental evolution, appears to have originated or borrowed a set of chronicles which, as adapted to the use of each nation, explained the creation of the earth and its human inhabitants in a way very flattering to the self-love of the nation giving the recital. No one to-day takes any of these recitals seriously, as a matter of course; but, on the other hand, they possess an abiding interest as historical documents. If for nothing else, they have interest as illustrating the advance of human knowledge during the comparatively brief period since these strange recitals found currency.

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CHAPTER II
COSMOGONY—ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD

No thinking man in any age can have failed to wonder about the origin of the world. The answers that the ancients gave to this ever present question were various, but they all had one quality in common, namely, extreme vagueness. Even after men had attained a relatively high stage of civilisation, their ideas of the natural phenomena about them were so endued with superstition, and so hedged about with ignorance as to the real causes, that their explanations of cause and effect in the natural world belong to the domain of poetry rather than to that of science. If this applies to such phenomena as wind and clouds and rain and lightning, the manifestations of which are constantly observed, it naturally applies with ten-fold force to the great mystery of the origin of things. Yet the human mind, childlike in the simplicity of its questionings, demands always an answer, and accepts the answer, if pronounced with a certain authority, in a spirit of childlike faith. The great poets and prophets of every nation of antiquity had supplied, each in his kind, the answers to the riddle of cosmogony, and many of these alleged solutions have come down to us to give us an insight into the mentality of their time. It is worth while to quote two or three of these in brief epitome, if for nothing else, to show their similar trend, and to emphasise their universal trait of vagueness.

Here is the cosmogonic scheme of the Phoenicians as transmitted to us by Sanchoniathon:

“At the beginning of all things was a dark and windy air, or a breeze of thick air and a turbid Chaos resembling Erebus; and that these were[34] unbounded, and for a long series of ages had no limit. But when this wind became enamoured of its own first principles (the Chaos), and an intimate union took place, that connection was called Pothos; and this was the beginning of the creation of all things. But it (the Chaos) knew not its own production; and from its embrace with the wind was generated Mot; which some call mud, but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this sprung all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe.

“And there were certain animals without sensation, from which intelligent animals were produced, and these were called Zophasemin, that is, beholders of the heavens; and they were formed in the shape of an egg: and from Mot shone forth the sun, and the moon, and the less and the greater stars. And when the air began to send forth life, by its fiery influence on the sea and earth, winds were produced and clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters. And when they were thus separated, and carried out of their proper places by the heat of the sun, and all met again in the air, and were dashed against each other, thunder and lightnings were the result: and at the sound of the thunder, the before-mentioned intelligent animals were aroused, and startled by the noise, and moved upon the earth and in the sea, male and female.”

This creation scheme of the Phœnicians has a peculiar interest for the Western world, because of the intimate relations that existed between the Phœnicians and the Jews. For a similar reason the ideas of the Babylonians and the Assyrians, as recorded on the so-called creation tablets exhumed at Nineveh, have fascinated the Bible scholars.

Trending still further to the East, one finds with the Hindus a slightly different cast of thought couched in a no less poetic diction. Thus in one of the sacred books, Brahma, the Eternal Worker, is represented as creating the earth while seeing his own reflection in the ocean of sweat that had fallen from his brow (Réclus).

The Chinese scheme of cosmogony is presented in the form of alleged answers to questions, by Confucius. Here is a characteristic excerpt as translated by M’Clatchie:

“At the beginning of Heaven and Earth, before chaos was divided, I think there were only two things, Fire and Water; and the sediment of the water formed the Earth. When we ascend a height and look down, the host of hills resemble the waves of the sea in appearance; the Water just flowed like this: I know not at what period it coagulated. At first it was very soft, but afterward it coagulated and became hard. One asked whether it resembled sand thrown up by the tide? He replied, Just so: the coarsest sediment of the Water became the Earth, and the most pure portion of the Fire became Wind, Thunder, Lightning, Sun, and Stars.

“Being asked: From the commencement of Heaven and Earth to the present time is not 10,000 years; I know not how it was before that time? He replied, Before that there was another clear opening (i.e. another Heaven and Earth) like the present one. Being further asked whether Heaven and Earth can perish altogether, he replied, They cannot: but, when mankind totally degenerate, then the whole shall return to Chaos, and Men and things shall all cease to exist; and then the World shall begin again. Some one asked how the first Man was generated; and he replied by the transmutation of the Air; the subtle portions of the Light and Darkness and the Five Elements united and produced his form. The Buddhists call this transmuting and generating. At present things are transmuted and generated in abundance like lice.

[35]

“Before Chaos was divided the Light-Dark Air was mixed up and dark, and when it divided, the centre formed an enormous and most brilliant opening, and the two E were established. Shaou Kang-tsee considers 129,600 years to be a Yuen (Kalpa); then, before this period of 129,600 years there was another opening and spreading out of the World; and before that again, there was another like the present; so that, Motion and Rest, Light and Darkness, have no beginning. As little things shadow forth great things, this may be illustrated by the revolutions of Day and Night. What Woo-Fung says about the Great Cessation of the entire Air, the vast and boundless agitation of all things, the whole expanse of waters changing position, the mountains bursting asunder, the channels being obliterated, Men and things all coming to an end, and the ancient vestiges all destroyed—all this refers to the utter destruction of the world by Deluge. We frequently see, on lofty mountains, the shells of the sea-snail and pearl-oyster, as it were generated in the middle of stones; these stones were (part of) the soil of the former world. The sea-snail and pearl-oyster belong to the water; so that that which was below changed and became high; that which was soft changed and became hard. This is a deep subject, and should be investigated.

“Being asked whether the multitude of things existed before Heaven and Earth divided, he replied: There was merely the idea of each thing. Heaven and Earth generate all things, and throughout all time, ancient and modern, cannot be separated from all things.”

It should be remarked as illustrating the difficulties of translating the thought of one language into the words of another, that Mr. F. H. Balfour questions certain of Canon M’Clatchie’s renderings. Thus a sentence which M’Clatchie interprets, “In the entire universe where there is no fate there is no air, and where there is no air there is no fate,” Mr. Balfour would read instead of “fate” “mind,” and instead of “air” “matter,” the sentence becoming, “In the entire universe where there is no mind there is no matter, and where there is no matter there is no mind.” Such divergent renderings as this are to be expected in the case of any Oriental language. It will not be forgotten how George Smith, one of the first great interpreters of the Assyrian tablets, read the Hebrew story of the Garden of Eden in the vague phrasing of the cuneiform document, where, as Menant quickly demonstrated, the writer of the document had composed a quite different story. This “reading into Homer that which Homer never knew” is much too familiar a subject to require further elucidation; but it is peculiarly desirable to bear it in mind in dealing with the philosophical and religious notions of any alien people.

Turning from the Orient, it is of interest to interrogate the Greek writers as to the creation schemes that were current in classical times. In the histories of Greece and Rome, we shall have occasion to examine these somewhat more in detail. For the present purpose, perhaps, an excerpt from Diodorus, who wrote with a full knowledge both of Greek and Roman ideas at about the beginning of our era, will be sufficiently illuminative.

Diodorus begins his history of the World with a brief account of the current notions as to the creation. He says: “Of the origin, therefore, of men there are two opinions amongst the most famous and authentic naturalists and historians. Some of these are of opinion that the world had neither beginning nor ever shall have end, and likewise say that mankind was from eternity and there never was a time when he first began to be. Others, on the contrary, conceive both the world to be made, and to be corruptible,[36] and that there was a certain time when men had first a being; for, whereas all things at the first were jumbled together, heaven and earth were in one mass and had one and the same form. But afterward they say when corporeal beings appeared one after another, the world at length presented itself in the order we now see, and that the air was in continual agitation, whose fiery parts ascended together to the highest place, its nature ‘by reason of its levity’ trending always upward, for which reason both the sun and that vast number of stars are contained within that orb; that the gross and earthy matter clotted together by moisture, by reason of its weight sunk down below into which place by continually whirling about. The sea was made of the humid, and the muddy earth of the more solid, as yet very soft, which by degrees at first was made crusty by the heat of the sun, and then, after the face of the earth was parched, and, as it were, fermented, the moisture afterward in many places bubbled up, as may be seen in standing ponds and marshy places, when, after the earth has been pierced with cold, the air grows hot on a sudden without a gradual alteration, and whereas moisture generates creatures from heat, things so generated by being enrapt in the dewy mists of the night grew and increased, and in the day solidified and were made hard by the heat of the sun, and thus the forms of all sorts of living creatures were brought forth into the light, and those that had most heat mounted aloft, and were fowls and birds of the air, but those that had more of earth were numbered in the order of creeping things and other creatures altogether suited to the earth. Then those beasts that were naturally watery and moist, called fishes, presently hastened to the place natural to them; and when the earth afterward became more dry and solid by the heat of the sun and the drying winds, it had not power at length to produce any more of the greater living creatures. And Euripides, the pupil of Anaxagoras, seems to be of the same opinion concerning the first generation of all things, for in his Menilippe he has these verses:

“But if this power of the earth to produce living creatures at the first origin of all things seem incredible to any, the Egyptians bring testimonies of this energy of the earth by the same things done there at this day; for they say that about Thebes in Egypt, after the overflowing of the river Nile, the earth thereby being covered by mud and slime, many places putrefy by the heat of the sun, and thence are bred multitudes of mice. It is certain, therefore, that out of the earth when it is hardened, and the air changed from its dew and natural temperament, animals are generated, by which means it came to pass that in the first beginning of all things various living creatures proceeded from the earth. And these are the opinions touching the original of all things.”

It would be difficult to say to what extent this Greek conception of creation had its origin in, or was influenced by, Oriental conception. Certainly the resemblance between this description and the Mosaic accounts, as contained in the first two chapters of Genesis, is noteworthy. Quite probably the ideas of both Hebrews and Greeks had been moulded to some extent in the pattern of Egyptian thought. Be that as it may, it was the scheme of cosmogony expressed in the Hebrew legends that was to become dominant[37] in post-classical times, and to rule unchallenged in the Western world for more than a thousand years. Indeed, this estimate of the time of real supremacy of the Hebrew thought is much too low; for that thought, though challenged as to some of its features by the science of the Renaissance which ushered in the period of modern history, was none the less to retain its hold upon the thoughts of men, but little abated in force, for another half millennium.

Not till well toward the close of the eighteenth century was an attempt made to substitute a scientific guess at the riddle of creation for the old poetic ones, and yet another century elapsed before the new explanations availed fully to supplant the old ones. It was Laplace, the great French mathematician, who elaborated toward the close of the eighteenth century a so-called nebular hypothesis, which may fairly be considered the first measurably scientific attempt ever made to explain the origin of the world. The hypothesis conceives that, at a time indefinitely remote, the entire solar system and space far beyond it was filled with a “fire mist,” consisting of the material in a gaseous state which now forms the sun and planets. This gaseous body, contracting through loss of heat, and rotating on its axis, left behind from time to time, successive rings of its own substance, that, consolidating, became the planets; the remaining core of substance contracting finally to constitute the body that we call the sun.

Nineteenth century science elaborated, without essentially modifying, this nebular hypothesis. Elaborate attempts have been made by Dr. Croll and by Sir Norman Lockyer to explain the origin of the “fire mist” itself, from which per hypothesis our solar system and an infinity of like stellar systems were formed. The meteoritic hypothesis of Lockyer supposes that the primeval fire mist was due to the collision of swarms of meteors; Croll’s theory postulates the smashing together of dark stars: but the two theories are essentially identical in their main thought, which is, that previously solidified bodies of the universe are made gaseous through mutual impact, thus affording material for the operation of those changes outlined in the nebular hypothesis of Laplace. True or false, this hypothesis stands to-day as the expression of the profoundest cosmogonic scientific guess that modern thought has been able to substitute for the poetic guesses of antiquity.

As to the creation of the living things on the globe, including man, the Oriental idea, which amounted to no explanation at all, but was rather the hiding of utter ignorance behind a screen of positive assertion, has been supplanted in the latter part of the nineteenth century by the scientific explanations of the evolutionists. The theory of evolution, as first formulated in anything like scientific terms, about the close of the eighteenth century, by the elder Darwin, the poet Goethe, and the French philosophical zoölogist Lamarck, and as given such amazing fertility by Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection in 1859, has taken full possession of the field as an explanation of the development of man through a series of lower organisms. But it must not be forgotten that this theory, with all of its revolutionary implications, does not as yet explain in clear scientific terms the origin of that lowliest organism which is the first in its series of living beings. It is for the science of the future to take this remaining step. Meantime, the developmental theory of to-day suffices to substitute in precise terms a scientific explanation of the origin of man for the vagaries of the old-time dreamers; and the more daring thinkers feel that the gap between the inorganic world and the lowest of man’s ancestors is not an impassable barrier to the application of a theory of universal evolution.

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CHAPTER III
COSMOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY—ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS

The vague notions of the ancients as to the origin of the world were inseparably linked with their restricted notions as to the present status of the world itself.

It is curious to reflect how small a portion of the habitable globe was the theatre of all those human activities, the record of which constitutes ancient history. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Greece, and Italy taken as a whole constitute but a small patch of territory encircling the Mediterranean Sea. Persia and India, stretching away to the East, lay vaguely at the confines of the world as conceived even in relatively late classical times. From a very early day, doubtless, there had been intercommunication between India and the West. Nevertheless, the conquest of Alexander was regarded as extending into regions hitherto utterly unknown, and as opening up a new world to Greek thought. Similarly two centuries later, Cæsar’s invasion of Britain brought regions to the attention of the geographer concerning which only the vaguest notions had been current.

Spain had long been known through the explorations and commercial enterprises of the Phœnicians and Greeks, and when it became a part of Roman territory, it was as familiarly known as Gaul or Britain. But these bounds, India on the east, Britain at the north, Spain in the west, and Upper Egypt toward the equator were the limits of the known world as understood by the classical mind. The vague traditions probably based on fact, as recorded by Herodotus, that a company of Phœnicians had sailed out of the Red Sea and gone by water about all the southern continent, to reappear from the west by way of the pillars of Hercules—or present Gibraltar,—served to give support to the theory that all the continental mass was encompassed in a universal sea, rather than to extend geographical knowledge in any precise sense.

Considering, then, the limitations of ancient geographical knowledge, it is wonderful how clear, precise, and correct an idea as to the shape, and even in a general way, as to the size, of the earth were attained by the classical geographers. To be sure, the Oriental thinkers applied the same poetical conceptions to cosmology that dominated them in other fields. The Hindu conceived the world as resting on the back of a mammoth elephant, which stood in turn on the back of a tortoise, and was transported thus across a boundless sea of milk. Greek mythology gives us the familiar picture of a human giant, Atlas, supporting the world. But such poetic conceptions as these, whatever their force may once have been with the Greeks, had been supplanted before the close of the classical epoch by ideas of a strictly scientific nature.

Not long after the beginning of the Christian era there lived a Greek named Strabo, whose status as a truly scientific geographer is gladly acknowledged to-day. Strabo’s remarks on cosmology may well be quoted here as showing the heights to which the science of geography had attained among the Greeks. Making due allowance for the changed phraseology of another age, these are such things as might be said by a geographer of to-day, yet they were written over two thousand years ago:

“We have treated these subjects at length in the first Book of the Geography. At present we shall make a few remarks on the operations of[39] nature and of Providence conjointly. On the operations of nature, that all things converge to a point, namely, the centre of the whole, and assume a spherical shape around it. The earth is the densest body and nearer the centre than all others: the less dense and next to it is water: but both land and water are spheres, the first solid, the second hollow, containing this earth within it. On the operations of Providence, that it has exercised a will, is disposed to variety, and is the artificer of innumerable works. In the first rank, as greatly surpassing all the rest is the generation of animals, of which the most excellent are gods and man, for whose sake the rest were formed. To the gods Providence assigned heaven; and the earth to men: the extreme parts of the world; for the extreme parts of the sphere are the centre and the circumference. But since water encompasses the earth, and man is not an aquatic, but a land animal, living in the air, and requiring much light, Providence formed many eminences and cavities in the earth, so that these cavities should receive the whole or a great part of the water which covers the land beneath it; and that the eminences should rise and conceal the water beneath them, except as much as was necessary for the use of the human race and the animals and plants about it.

“But as all things are in constant motion, and undergo great changes (for it is not possible that such things of such a nature, so numerous and vast, could be otherwise regulated in the world), we must not suppose the earth or the water always to continue in this state, so as to retain perpetually the same bulk, without increase or diminution, or that each preserves the same fixed place, particularly as the reciprocal change of one into the other is most consonant to nature from their proximity; but that much of the land is changed into water, and a great portion of water becomes land, just as we observe great differences in the earth itself. For one kind of earth crumbles easily, another is solid and rocky, and contains iron; and so of others. There is also a variety in the quality of water; for some waters are saline, others sweet and potable, others medicinal, and either salutary or noxious; others cold or hot. Is it therefore surprising that some parts of the earth which are now inhabited should formerly have been occupied by sea, and that what are now seas should formerly have been inhabited land? So also fountains once existing have failed and others have burst forth; and similarly in the case of rivers and lakes; again, mountains and plains have been converted reciprocally one into the other. On this subject I have spoken before at length, and now let this be said:

“Geometry and astronomy, as we before remarked, seem absolutely indispensable in this science. This in fact is evident, that without some such assistance, it would be impossible to be accurately acquainted with the configuration of the earth; its climate, dimensions, and the like information.

“As the size of the earth has been demonstrated by other writers, we shall here take for granted and receive as accurate what they have advanced. We shall also assume that the earth is spheroidal, that its surface is likewise spheroidal, and above all, that bodies have a tendency toward its centre, which later point is clear to the perception of the most average understanding. However, we may show summarily that the earth is spheroidal, from the consideration that all things however distant tend to its centre, and that everybody is attracted toward its centre of gravity; this is more distinctly proved from observations of the sea and sky, for here the evidence of the senses, and common observation is alone requisite. The convexity of the sea is a further proof of this to those who have sailed; for they cannot perceive lights at a distance when placed at the same level as their eyes, but if[40] raised on high, they at once become perceptible to vision, though at the same time farther removed. So, when the eye is raised, it sees what before was utterly imperceptible. Homer speaks of this when he says:

“‘Lifted up on the vast wave he quickly beheld afar.’ Sailors, as they approach their destination, behold the shore continually raising itself to their view; and objects which had at first seemed low, begin to elevate themselves. Our gnomons, also, are, among other things, evidence of the revolution of the heavenly bodies; and common sense at once shows us, that if the depth of the earth were infinite, such a revolution could not take place.”

It is astounding in the light of present-day knowledge to reflect that such correct and scientific views as to the form of the earth were subordinated, and, at last, almost entirely supplanted, by the curiously faulty conceptions of the Oriental dreamers. A chance phrase of the Hebrew writings refers to the corners of the earth, and this sufficed to promulgate a false conception of cosmology, which dominated the world for a millennium. The old Greek conception never quite died out, as the faith of Columbus showed, but it was so crushed beneath the weight of ecclesiastical authority, that it maintained existence only with here and there a nonconformist to the ideas of his time; and when Columbus and Magellan had demonstrated the falsity of the Oriental conception, and Copernicus and Galileo had further revolutionised the Hebrew conception, the advocates of the false view fought tooth and nail for a conception which had come to be intimately associated with those religious tenets which, to them, were more sacred than life itself.

Truth prevailed in the end, of course; but it was not till well into the nineteenth century that the chief supporters of the old Hebrew cosmology officially abandoned their position, and admitted that the world is round, and is not the centre of the universe.

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CHAPTER IV
THE ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH AND OF MAN

Generally speaking, the old-time nations rejoiced in their alleged antiquity. Notions as to exact chronology for long periods of time were practically non-existent. A full sense of the value of chronology as the foundation stone of history was only acquired in relatively modern times. The figures that the ancients used in referring to their national existence were very sweeping, and suffered from the same defects of vagueness that characterise their other thoughts.

Herodotus, basing his belief on what he learned in Egypt, ascribed to the Egyptians a national existence of thirteen thousand years. Diodorus extends this period to twenty-three thousand, and some other reports current in classical times increase the figures by yet another ten thousand. Even this is a meagre period compared with the claims made by the Babylonians, who number the years of their own nation in hundreds of thousands; and it is said that the Chinese, in computing their own history, do not stop short of millions of years.

The Babylonians were the astronomers of antiquity, and doubtless the less scientific Greeks regarded their knowledge of the stars as something quite occult, and were ready to believe almost any chronological statement that the Babylonians put forward. The Romans, indeed, practical people that they always were in the day of their prime, were disposed to look with[41] more of scepticism upon such claims. Cicero announces himself as distinctly sceptical regarding the allegation that the Babylonian records extend over a period of two hundred and seventy thousand years. His scepticism, however, was probably based rather upon a shrewd common-sense estimate of human affairs than upon any preconception as to the antiquity of man. In a word, the ancients as a class had no fear of time, and most of them had no religious or other preconception that limited their estimate as to the age of a nation or the exact age of the world itself. The latter-day Hebrew was an exception to this rule. He came at last to look upon the vague historical records of his people as sacred books, inspired in their every word, and detailing among other things the exact genealogy of the leaders of his race from the creation to his own time. It is not, indeed, probable that the ancient Hebrew made any great point of the exact period of time compassed by his records, since, as has been said, questions of exact chronology entered but little into the thoughts of man in that day; but in a more recent time students of Hebrew records have attempted to ascertain the exact age of the earth and the exact period of human existence by aggregating the various disconnected records of the Hebrew scriptures, long after the modern historical method had been applied acutely to all other accessible writings of antiquity.

These writings of the Hebrews were held to constitute a class apart, and were looked to as having an authenticity not to be claimed by any other ancient documents; and while no two scholars of authority, making independent computations, were ever able to agree as to the exact facts connoted by the Hebrew chronology, yet none the less, each prominent investigator clung with full faith to his own estimate, and several of them found schools of followers who battled as eagerly as the masters themselves for the exact dates they believed to be represented by the vague Hebrew estimates. Generally speaking, these estimates ascribe the creation of the world and of man to a period about four thousand years before the Christian era; the year of the Deluge, which was supposed to have engulfed all the inhabitants of the earth except a single family, being variously estimated between the years 3200 and 2300 B.C. That some such figures as these represented the truth regarding a period of man’s residence here on the earth came to be accepted throughout Christendom as an article of faith, to question which was a rank heresy.

The larger figures which the Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians and other nations had employed came to be regarded as absurd guesses, which it were a sacrilege to countenance now that the truth was known; and yet, as every one nowadays knows, these larger figures, vague guesses though they were, approach much nearer to the actual truth than the restricted numbers that supplanted them.

The changed point of view with which the modern historian regards the ancient chronology has been attained through a process of scientific development extending over about a century. A truer knowledge of the cosmic scheme did not bring with it as a necessary counterpart the correct conception as to the length of time that this scheme had been in operation.

Laplace, in formulating his nebular hypothesis, had nothing definite to say as to the length of time required for its development, and there was nothing in his computation to throw any light whatever upon the antiquity of the earth as a habitable sphere.

Cuvier, the great contemporary of Laplace, no doubt accepted the nebular hypothesis as a valid explanation of the origin of the world, but he held to[42] the conception of about six thousand years for the age of man as rigidly as did any Middle Age monk. Cuvier was the first to demonstrate that certain fossil skeletons belonged to no existing species of animal. In other words, he believed that races of great beasts had once inhabited the earth, but no longer have living representatives. This, however, did not suggest to him that the earth had long been peopled, but only went to show, as he believed, that a great catastrophe, as the universal flood was supposed to have been, had actually taken place. It remained for Charles Lyell, the famous English geologist, working along the lines first suggested by another great Englishman, James Hutton, to prove that the successive populations of the earth, whose remains are found in fossil beds, had lived for enormous periods of time, and had supplanted one another on the earth, not through any sudden catastrophe, but by slow processes of the natural development and decay of different kinds of beings.

Following the demonstrations of Lyell there came about a sudden change of belief among geologists as to the age of the earth, until, in our day, the period during which the earth has been inhabited by one kind of creature and another is computed, not by specific thousands, but by vague hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.

The last refuge for champions of the old chronology was found in the claim that man himself had been but about six thousand years upon the earth, whatever might be true of his non-human forerunners. But even this claim had presently to be abandoned when the researches of the palæontologists had been directed to the subject of fossil man.

The researches of Schmerling, of Boucher de Perth, of Lyell himself, and of a host of later workers demonstrated that fossil remains of man were found commingled in embedded strata and in cave bottoms under conditions that demonstrated their extreme antiquity; and in the course of the quarter century after 1865, in which year Lyell had published his epoch-marking work on the antiquity of man, the new idea had made a complete conquest, until now no one any more thinks of disputing the extreme antiquity of man than he thinks of questioning the great age of the earth itself. To be sure, no one pretends any longer to put a precise date upon man’s first appearance. The new figures take on something of the vagueness that characterise the estimates of the Babylonians; but it is accepted as clearly proven that the racial age of man is at least to be numbered in tens of thousands of years. The only clues at present accessible that tend to give anything like definiteness to the computations are the researches of Egyptologists and Assyriologists.

In Egypt remains are found, as we shall see, which carry the history of civilisation back to something like 5000 B.C., and in Mesopotamia the latest finds are believed to extend the record by yet another two thousand years. Man then existed in a state of high civilisation at a period antedating the Christian era by about twice the length of time formerly admitted for the age of earth itself.

How much more ancient the remains of barbaric man, as preserved in the oldest caves, may be, it would be but vague guess work and serve no useful purpose, to attempt to estimate. History proper, as usually conceived, is concerned only with the doings of civilised man; and, indeed, in one sense, such a restricted view is absolutely forced upon the historian, for it is only civilised man who is able to produce records that are preserved through the ages in such manner as to tell a connected story to after generations. The arrow-heads and charred sticks of the stone age of man are indeed proofs that this man existed, and that he led his certain manner of life, some clear[43] intimations as to which are given by these mementoes; but they point to no path by which we may hope to follow the precise history of those succeeding generations by which the man of the stone age was connected with, for example, the builder of the Egyptian Pyramids. We can, indeed, trace in general terms the course of human progress. We know that from using rough stone implements chipped into shape, man came finally to acquire the art of polishing stones by friction, thus making more finished implements. We know that later on he learned to smelt metals, marvellous achievement that it was; and when this had been accomplished, we may suppose that he pretty rapidly developed cognate arts that led to higher civilisation.

Reasoning from this knowledge, we speak of the palæolithic or rough stone age, of the neolithic or polished stone age, of the age of bronze, and finally of the age of iron, as representing great epochs in human progress. But it is only in the vaguest terms that we can connect one of these ages with another, and any attempt at a definite chronology in relation to them utterly fails us. This would not so much matter if we were sure in any given case that we were tracing the history of the same individual race through the successive periods; but, in point of fact, no such unity of race can be predicated. There is every reason to believe that each and every race that ever attained to higher civilisation passed through these various stages, but the familiar examples of the American Indians, who were in the rough stone age when their continent was discovered by Columbus, and of the African and Australian races, who, even now, have advanced no farther, illustrate the fact that different races have passed through these various stages of development in widely separated periods of time, and take away all certainty from any attempts to compute exact chronologies.

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CHAPTER V
THE RACES OF MAN AND THE ARYAN QUESTION

The question of races of mankind is one that has given rise to great diversity of opinion among scientists and students of ethnology, and it may as well be admitted at the outset that no very definite conclusions have as yet been arrived at. One set of ethnologists have been disposed to look to physical characters as the basis of a classification; others have been guided more by language. In the earlier stages of the inquiry the Biblical traditions have entered into the case with prejudicial effect, and with the advances of science this subject as a whole has seemed to grow more confused rather than clearer. For a time there was a certain unanimity in regarding the Egyptians and their allies as Hamites, the Babylonians, Hebrews, Phœnicians, and their allies as Semites, and in bringing all other non-Aryan races into a conglomerate class under the title of Turanians. Latterly, however, the artificial character of such a classification as this has been more and more apparent, and a growing belief tends to consider all the peoples grouped about the Mediterranean as forming a single race, including within that race, as is apparent, members of the old races of Hamites, Semites, and Aryans. Yet another classification would group the peoples of the earth according to their several stages of civilisation. But, without attempting a complete enumeration of all the various systems that have been suggested, one may summarise them all by repeating that there is no complete uniformity of classification accepted by all authoritative students of the subject.

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Here as elsewhere, however, there is a tendency for old systems and old names to maintain their hold, and notwithstanding the disavowals of the most recent schools of ethnology, the classification into Hamites, Semites, Aryans, and Turanians is doubtless the one that has still the widest vogue. In particular the Aryan race, to which all modern European races belong, has seemed more and more to make good its claims to recognition. Thanks to the relatively new science of comparative philology, it has been shown, and has now come to be familiarly understood, that the languages of the Hindu and the Persian in the far East are based upon the same principles of phonation as the Greek and Latin and their daughter languages, and the language of the great Teutonic race.

It is this affinity of languages that is the one defining feature of the Aryan race. Since historical studies have made it more and more plain that a nation in its wanderings, whether as a conquering or a conquered people, may adopt the language of another nation, it has become clear that a classification of mankind based on ethnic features would have no necessary correspondence with a classification based upon language. The philologists, therefore, who cling to the word “Aryan,” or to the idea which it connotes, have latterly been disposed to urge, as for example Professor Max Müller does in the most strenuous terms, that in contending for an Aryan race they refer solely to a set of people speaking the Aryan language, quite regardless of the physical affinities of these people. And it is in this sense of the word, and this alone, that the dark-skinned race of India is to be considered brother to the fair-skinned Scandinavian; that, in short, all the nations of modern Europe and the classical nations of antiquity are to be jumbled together in an arbitrary union with the people of far-off Persia and India.

While this classification establishing an Aryan race on the basis of language has the support of all philologists, and, indeed, is susceptible of the readiest verification, there is a growing tendency to frown upon the use of the word “Aryan” itself. The word came into vogue at a time when it was supposed on all hands that the original home of the people to whom it was applied was Central Asia; that this was the cradle of the Aryan race was long accepted quite as a matter of course—hence the general acceptance of the name. But, in the course of the last century, the supposed fact of the Asiatic origin of the Aryans has been placed in dispute, and there is a seemingly growing school of students, who, basing their claims on the evidence of philology, are disposed to believe that the cradle of this race—if race it be—was not Central Asia, but perhaps Western or Northwestern Europe. We must not pause to discuss the evidence for this new view here; suffice it that the evidence seems highly suggestive, if not conclusive.

To many philologists, including some who still hold that the probabilities favour an Asiatic origin of the race, it now seems advisable to adopt a name of less doubtful import, and of late it has become quite usual to substitute for the word “Aryan” the compound word “Indo-European,” or, what is perhaps better, “Indo-Germanic.” Such a word, it is clear, summarises the fact that the Indians in the far East and the Germanic race in the far West have a language that is fundamentally the same, without connoting any theory whatever as to the origin or other relations of these widely scattered peoples. The name thus has an undoubted scientific status that makes it attractive, but nevertheless it is too cumbersome to be accepted at once as a substitute for the word “Aryan” in ordinary usage. Nor, indeed does there seem to be any good reason why such substitution should be made. Words very generally come in the course of time to have an application which their[45] original derivation would not at all justify, and there is no more reason for ruling out the word “Aryan,” even should it be proven absolutely that Asia was not the original cradle of the Indo-Germanic race, than there would be for discarding a very large number of words of Greek and Latin derivation that are familiarly employed in the various modern European languages. Indeed, it may be taken for granted that the generality of people to whom the word “Aryan” is familiar have no such preconception aroused in their minds by the word as it conveys to the mind of special scholars, and in any event where a distinct disavowal is made of any ethnological preconceptions in connection with the word, one is surely justified for convenience sake in continuing to use the word “Aryan” as a synonym for the more complicated term “Indo-Germanic.”

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CHAPTER VI
ON PREHISTORIC CULTURE

It has been said that history proper is usually regarded as having to do solely with the deeds of civilised man, but in point of fact the scope of history as written at the present day necessarily falls far short of comprehending the entire history of civilisation. Before the dawn of recorded history man had evolved to a stage in which the greater number of the greatest arts had been attained. That is to say, he was possessed of articulate language. He had learned to clothe and to house himself. He knew the use of fire. He could manufacture implements of war and of peace. He had surrounded himself with domesticated animals. He added to his food supply by practising agriculture. He had established systems of government. He knew how to embellish his surroundings by the practice of painting and of decorative architecture, and last, and perhaps greatest, he had invented the art of writing, and carried it far toward perfection.

With the development of these arts history proper is not concerned, but this is not because the development of these arts would not constitute true history if its course were known, but simply because of our entire ignorance of all details of the subject.

In order to gain a clearer idea, however, of the status of human culture at the dawn of history proper, it may be worth while to glance in the most cursory way at each of the great inventions and developments upon which the entire structure of civilisation depends.

First. Language.

Perhaps the greatest single step ever made in the history of man’s upward progress was taken when the practice of articulate speech began. It would be contrary to all that we know of human evolution to suppose that this development was a sudden one, or that it transformed a non-human into a human species at a sudden vault. It is well known that many of the lower animals are able to communicate with one another in a way that implies at least a vague form of speech, and it has been questioned whether the higher species of apes do not actually articulate in a way strictly comparable to the vocalisation of man. Be that as it may, the clear fact remains that one species of animal did at a very remote time in the past develop the power of vocalisation in the direction of articulate speech to a degree that in course of time broadened the gap between that species and all others, till it became an impassable chasm.

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Without language of an explicit kind not even the rudiments of civilisation would be possible. No one perhaps ever epitomised the value of articulate speech in a single phrase more tellingly than does Herder when he says: “The lyre of Amphion has not built cities. No magic wand has transformed deserts into gardens. Language has done it,—that great source of sociality.”

Obviously, then, could we know the history of the evolution of articulate speech it would be one of the very greatest chapters in all human records; but it is equally obvious that we can never hope to know that history except inferentially. When the dawn of history proper came, man had so long practised speaking that he had developed countless languages so widely divergent from one another that they are easily classified into several great types. From the study of these languages the philologist draws more or less valid inferences as to the later stages of linguistic growth and development. But he gains no inklings whatever as to any of those earlier developments which constituted the origin or the creation of language.

Second. Clothing and Housing of Prehistoric Man.

Nothing is more surprising to the student of antiquity than to find at what seems the very beginning of civilisation such monuments as the Pyramids and the great sculptures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. But a moment’s reflection makes it clear that man must have learned to house himself, as well as to clothe himself, before he can have started on that tour of conquest of the world which was so far advanced before the dawn of history. Doubtless the original home of man must have been in a tropical or subtropical climate, and he cannot well have left these pampering regions until he had made a considerable development, almost the first step of which required that he should gain the means of protecting himself from the cold. The idea of such protection once acquired, its elaboration was but a question of time. It is amazing to observe how closely, both as regards attire and building, man had approximated to the modern standards at the time when he first produced monumental or other records that have come down to us.

Third. The Use of Fire.

Quite as fundamental as the matter of housing and clothing, and even more marvellous, considered as an invention, was the recognition of the uses of fire, and the development of the methods of producing fire at will. It is conceivable that some individual man at a relatively early stage of human progress developed and elaborated this idea, becoming the actual inventor of fire as applied to human uses. If such was really the case, no greater inventor ever lived. But the wildest flight of speculative imagination does not suffice to suggest where or when this man may have lived. It cannot well be doubted, however, that the use of fire must have been well known to the earliest generations of men that attempted to wander far from the tropics. Clothed, housed, and provided with fire, man was able to undertake the conquest of all regions, but without fire he dare not have braved the winters even of the middle latitudes, to say nothing of Arctic regions.

No doubt the earliest method of producing fire practically employed was by friction of dry sticks, much after the manner still in use among certain savage tribes. Obviously the flint and steel, which for so many thousands of years was to be the sole practical means of producing fire among the civilised races, could not have come into vogue until the age of iron. The lucifer match, which was finally to banish flint and steel, was an invention of the nineteenth century.

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Fourth. Implements of Peace and War.

A gigantic bound was made when man first learned to use a club habitually, and doubtless the transition from a club to a mechanically pointed spear constituted a journey as long and as hard as the evolution from the spear to the modern repeating rifle. But before the dawn of history there had been evolved from the club the battle-axe of metal, and from the crude spear the metal-pointed javelin, the arrow, the sword, and the dagger; the bow, too, of which the arrow was the complement, had long been perfected, and from it had evolved various other implements of warfare, culminating in the gigantic battering-ram.

Of implements of a more pacific character, boats of various types furnished means of transportation on the water, and wagons with wheel and axle, acting on precisely the same principle which is still employed, had been perfected, both of these being used in certain of their types for purposes of war as well as in the arts of peace. Manufacture included necessarily the making of materials for clothing from an early stage, and this had advanced from the crude art of dressing skins to the weaving of woollen fabrics and fine linens that would bear comparison with the products of the modern loom. Stones were shaped and bricks made as materials for building. The principle of the pulley was well understood as an aid to human strength; and the potter’s wheel, with which various household utensils were shaped, was absurdly like the ones that are still used for a like purpose. In all of these arts of manufacture, indeed, a degree of perfection had been attained upon which there was to be singularly little advance for some thousands of years. It was not until well toward the close of the eighteenth century that the series of great mechanical advances began with the application of steam to the propulsion of machinery, which has revolutionised manufacture and for the first time made a radical change from the systems of transportation that were in vogue before the dawn of history; and it was only a few centuries earlier that the invention of gunpowder metamorphosed the methods of warfare that had been in vogue for a like period.

Fifth. The Domestication of Animals.

It is not difficult, if one considers the matter attentively, to imagine how revolutionary must have been the effect of the domestication of animals. Primitive man can at first have had no idea of the possible utility of the animals about him, except as objects of pursuit; but doubtless at a very early stage it became customary for children to tame, or attempt to tame, such animals as wolves, foxes, and cats of various tribes when taken young, much as children of to-day enjoy doing the same thing. This more readily led to the early domestication or half-domestication of such animals as that species of wolf from which the various races of dogs sprang. It is held that the dog was the first animal to become truly domesticated. Obviously this animal could be of advantage to man in the chase, even in very early stages of human evolution; and it is quite possible that a long series of generations may have elapsed before any animal was added to the list of man’s companions. But the great step was taken when herbivorous animals, useful not for the chase, but as supplying milk and flesh for food, were made tributary to the use of man. From that day man was no longer a mere hunter and fisher; he became a herdsman, and in the fact of entering upon a pastoral life, he had placed his foot firmly on the first rung of the ladder of civilisation. An obvious change became necessary in the life of pastoral people. They could still remain nomads, to be sure, but their wanderings were restricted by a new factor. They must go where food could be found[48] for their herds. Moreover, economic features of vast importance were introduced in the fact that the herds of a people became a natural prey of less civilised peoples of the same region. It became necessary, therefore, to make provision for the protection of the herds, and in so doing an increased feeling of communal unity was necessarily engendered. Hitherto we may suppose that a single family might live by itself without greatly encountering interference from other families. So long as game was abundant, and equally open to the pursuit of all, there would seem to be no reason why one family should systematically interfere with another, except in individual instances where quarrels of a strictly personal nature had arisen. But the pastoral life introduced an element of contention that must necessarily have led to the perpetual danger of warfare, and concomitantly to the growing necessity for such aggregate action on the part of numerous families as constituted the essentials of a primitive government. It is curious to reflect on these two opposite results that must have grown almost directly from the introduction of the custom of domesticating food animals. On the one hand, the growth of the spirit of war between tribes; on the other, the development of the spirit of tribal unity, the germs of nationality.

Much thought has been given by naturalists to the exact origin of the various races of domesticated animals. Speaking in general terms, it may be said that Asia is the great original home of domesticated animals as a class. Possibly the dog may be the descendant of some European wolf, and he had perhaps become the companion of man before that great hypothetical eastward migration of the Aryans took place, which the modern ethnologist believes to have preceded the Asiatic settlement of that race. The cat also may not unlikely be a descendant of the European wild cat, but the sheep, the cow, the donkey, and the horse, as well as the barnyard fowl, are almost unquestionably of Asiatic origin. Of these the horse was probably the last to be domesticated, since we find that the Egyptians did not employ this animal until a relatively late stage of the historic period, namely, about the twentieth century B.C. This does not mean that the horse was unknown to the Asiatic nations until so late a period, but it suggests a relatively recent use of this animal as compared, for example, with the use of cattle, which had been introduced into Egypt before the beginning of the historic period. No animal of importance and only one bird—the turkey—has been added to the list of domesticated creatures since the dawn of history.

Sixth. Agriculture.

The studies of the philologists make it certain that long periods of time elapsed after man had entered on a pastoral life before he became an agriculturist. The proof of this is found, for example, in the fact that the Greeks and Romans use words obviously of the same derivation for the names of various domesticated animals, while a similar uniformity does not pertain to their names for cultivated cereals or for implements of agriculture. Theoretical considerations of the probable state of pastoral man would lead to the same conclusion, for the gap between the wandering habits of the owners of flocks, whose chief care was to find pasture, and the fixed abode of an agricultural people, is indeed a wide one. To be sure, the earliest agriculturist may not have been a strictly permanent resident of any particular district; he might migrate like the bird with the seasons, and change the region of his abode utterly from year to year, but he must in the nature of the case have remained in one place for several months together, that is to say, from sowing to harvest time; and to people of nomadic instincts this[49] interference with their desires might be extremely irksome, to say nothing of the work involved in cultivating the soil. But once the advantages of producing a vegetable food supply, according to a preconceived plan, instead of depending upon the precarious supply of nature, were fully understood and appreciated, another great forward movement had been made in the direction of ultimate civilisation. Incidentally it may be added that another incentive had been given one tribe to prey upon another, and conversely another motive for strengthening the bonds of tribal unity.

Agricultural plants, like domesticated animals, are practically all of Asiatic origin. There are, however, three important exceptions, namely, maize among cereals and the two varieties of potato, all of which are indigenous to the Western hemisphere, and hence were necessarily unknown to the civilised nations of antiquity. With these exceptions all the important agricultural plants had been known and cultivated for numberless generations before the opening of the historic period.

Seventh. Government.

We have just seen how the introduction of domesticated animals and agricultural plants must have influenced the communal habits of primitive man in the direction of the establishment of local government. There are reasons to believe that, prior to taking these steps, the most advanced form of human settlement was the tribe or clan consisting of the members of a single family. The unit of this settlement was the single family itself with a man at its head, who was at once provider, protector, and master. As the various members of a family held together in obedience to the gregarious instinct, which man shares with the greater number of animals, it was natural that some one member of the clan should be looked to as the leader of the whole. In the ordinary course of events, such leader would be the oldest man, the founder of the original family; but there must have been a constant tendency for younger men of pronounced ability to aspire to the leadership, and to wrest from the patriarch his right of mastery.

Such mastery, however, whether held by right of age, or of superior capacity, must have been in the early day very restricted in scope, for of necessity primitive man depended largely on his own individual efforts both for securing food, and for protection of himself and his immediate family against enemies, and under such circumstances an independence of character must have been developed that implies an unwillingness to submit to the autocratic authority of another. Only when the pastoral and agricultural phases of civilisation had become fully established, would communities assume such numerical proportions as to bring the question of leadership of the clan into perpetual prominence; and no doubt a very long series of internal strifes and revolutionary dissensions must have preceded the final recognition of the fact that no large community of people can aspire to anything like integrity without the clear recognition of some centralised authority. Under the conditions incident to the early stages of civilisation, where man was subject to the marauding raids of enemies, it was but natural that this centralised authority should be conceded to some man whose recognised prowess in warfare had aroused the respect and admiration of his fellows. Thus arose the system of monarchial government, which we find fully established everywhere among the nations of antiquity when they first emerge out of the obscuration of the prehistoric period. The slow steps of progress by which the rights of the individual came to strike an evener balance, as against the all-absorbing usurpations of the monarch and a small coterie of his adherents, constitute one of the chief elements of the story of[50] history that is to be unfolded in our pages. But when the story opens, there is no intimation of this reaction. The monarch is all dominant; his individual subjects seem the mere puppets of his will.

Eighth. The Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Architecture.

The graven fragments of ivory and of reindeer horn, found in the cave deposits of the stone age, give ample proof that man early developed the desire and the capacity for drawing. Doubtless there was a more or less steady advance upon this art of the cave-dweller throughout succeeding generations, though the records of such progress are for the most part lost. The monuments of Egypt and of Mesopotamia, however, have been preserved to us in sufficient completeness to prove that the graphic arts had reached a really high stage of development before the close of the prehistoric period. It is but fair to add, however, that in this direction the changes of the earlier centuries of the historic period were far greater than were the changes in the practical arts.

As early as the ninth century B.C. the Assyrians had developed the art of sculpture in bas-relief in a way that constituted a marvellous advance upon anything that may reasonably be believed to have been performed by prehistoric man, and only three centuries later came the culminating period of Greek art, which marked the stage of almost revolutionary progress.

Ninth. The Art of Writing.

One other art remains to be mentioned even in the most cursory survey. This is the latest, and in some respects the greatest of them all—the art of writing. In one sense this art is only a development of the art of drawing, but it is a development that has such momentous consequences that it may well be considered as distinct. Moreover, it led to results so important for the historian, and so directly in line of all our future studies, that we shall do well to examine it somewhat more in detail.

All the various phases of prehistoric culture at which we have just glanced have left reminiscences, more or less vague in character, for the guidance of students of later ages; but the materials for history proper only began to be accumulated after man had learned to give tangible expression to his thoughts in written words. No doubt the first steps toward this accomplishment were taken at a very early day. We have seen that the cave-dweller even made graphic though crude pictures, including hunting scenes, that are in effect the same in intent, and up to a certain point the same in result, as if the features of the event were described in words. Doubtless there was no generation after the stone age in which men did not resort, more or less, to the graphic delineation of ideas.

The familiar story that Herodotus tells of the message sent by the Scythians to Darius is significant. It will be recalled that the Scythian messenger brought the body of a bird, a mouse, and a frog, together with a bundle of five arrows. Interrogated as to the meaning of this strange gift, the messenger replied that his instructions were to present the objects and retire. Darius and his officers were much puzzled to interpret the message, Darius himself being disposed to regard it as an admission on the part of the Scythians that they conceded him lord of their territory, the land, water, and air; but one of the officers of the great king gave a different interpretation, which was presently accepted as the correct one. As he read the message it implied that unless the Persians could learn to fly through the air like birds, or to burrow through the earth like a mouse, or to dive through the water like a frog, they should not be able to escape the arrows of the Scythians. Miss Amelia B. Edwards, in her delightful book on[51] Egypt, has hazarded some conjectures as to the exact way in which the bird and mouse and frog and arrows were presented to Darius. She believes that they were fastened to a piece of bark, or perhaps to a fragment of hide, in fixed position, so that they became virtually hieroglyphics. The question is interesting, but of no vital importance, since the exact manner of presentation would not in any way alter the intent, but would only bear upon the readiness of its interpretation. The real point of interest lies in the fact of this transmission of ideas by symbols, which constitutes the essence of the art of writing.

It may be presumed that crude methods of sending messages, not unlike this of the Scythians, were practised more or less independently, and with greater or less degrees of elaboration, by barbaric and half-civilised tribes everywhere. The familiar case of the American Indians, who were wont to send a belt of wampum and an arrow as a declaration of war, is an illustration in point. The gap between such a presentation of tangible objects and the use of crude pictures to replace the objects themselves would not seem, from a civilised standpoint, to be a very wide one. Yet no doubt it was an enormously difficult gap to cross. Granted the idea, any one could string together the frog, the bird, the mouse, and the arrows, but only here and there a man would possess the artistic skill requisite to make fairly recognisable pictures of these objects. It is true that the cave man of a vastly earlier period had developed a capacity to draw the outlines of such animals as the reindeer and the mammoth with astonishing verisimilitude. Professor Sayce has drawn the conclusion from this that the average man dwelling in the caves of France at that remote epoch could draw as well as the average Frenchman of to-day; but a moment’s consideration will make it clear that the facts in hand by no means warrant so sweeping a conclusion. There is nothing to show, nor is there any reason to believe, that the cave-dweller pictures that have come down to us are the work of average men of that period. On the contrary, it is much more likely that they were the work, not of average men, but of the artistic geniuses of their day,—of the Michelangelos, Raphaels, or if you prefer, the Landseers, the Bonheurs, and Corots of their time.

There is no more reason to suppose that the average cave dweller could have drawn the reindeer hunting scene or the famous picture of the mammoth, than that the average Frenchman of to-day could have painted the Horse Fair. There is no reason then to suppose that the average Scythian could have made himself equally intelligible to Darius by drawing pictures instead of sending actual objects, though quite possibly there were some men among the Scythian hordes who could have done so. The idea of such pictorial ideographs had seemingly not yet come to the Scythians, but that idea had been attained many centuries before by other people of a higher plane of civilisation. At least four thousand years before the age of Darius, the Babylonians, over whose descendants the Persian king was to rule, had invented or developed a picture-writing and elaborated it until it was able to convey, not merely vague generalities, but exquisite shades of meaning. The Egyptians, too, at a period probably at least as remote, had developed what seems an independent system of picture-writing, and brought it to an astonishing degree of perfection.

At least three other systems of picture-writing in elaborated forms are recognised, namely, that used by the Hittites in Western Asia, that of the Chinese, and that of the Mexican Indians in America. No dates can be fixed as to when these were introduced, neither is it possible to demonstrate[52] the entire independence of the various systems; but all of them were developed in prehistoric periods. There seems no reason to doubt that in each case the picture-writing consisted originally of the mere graphic presentation of an object as representing an idea connected with that object itself, precisely as if the Scythians had drawn pictures of the mouse, the bird, the frog, and the arrows in order to convey the message to Darius. Doubtless periods of incalculable length elapsed after the use of such ideograms as this had come into vogue before the next great step was taken, which consisted in using a picture, not merely to represent some idea associated with the object depicted, but to represent a sound. Probably the first steps of this development came about through the attempt to depict the names of men. Since the name of a man is often a combination of syllables, having no independent significance, it was obviously difficult to represent that name in a picture record, and yet, in the nature of the case, the name of the man might often constitute the most important part of the record. Sooner or later the difficulty was met, as the Egyptian hieroglyphics prove to us, by adopting a system of phonetics, in which a certain picture stands for the sound of each syllable of the name. The pictures selected for such syllabic use were usually chosen because the name of the object presented by the picture began with the sound in question. Such a syllabary having been introduced, its obvious utility led presently to its application, not merely to the spelling of proper names, but to general purposes of writing.

One other step remained, namely, to make that final analysis of sounds which reduces the multitude of syllables to about twenty-five elementary sounds, and to recognise that, by supplying a symbol for each one of these sounds, the entire cumbersome structure of ideographs and syllables might be dispensed with. The Egyptians made this analysis before the dawn of history, and had provided themselves with an alphabet; but strangely enough they had not given up, nor did they ever relinquish in subsequent times, the system of ideographs and syllabics that mark the stages of evolution of the alphabet. The Babylonians at the beginning of their historic period had developed a most elaborate system of syllables, but their writing had not reached the alphabet stage.

The introduction of the alphabet to the exclusion of the cruder methods was a feat accomplished within the historic period by the Phœnicians, some details of which we shall have occasion to examine later on. This feat is justly regarded as one of the greatest accomplishments of the entire historic period. But that estimate must not blind us to the fact that the Egyptians and Babylonians, and probably also the Chinese, were in possession of their fully elaborated systems of writing long before the very beginnings of that historic period of which we are all along speaking. Indeed, as has been said, true history could not begin until individual human deeds began to be recorded in written words.

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[53]

PART II

THE HISTORY OF EGYPT

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

H. C. BRUGSCH, E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, C. K. J. BUNSEN, J. F. CHABAS, ADOLF
ERMAN, K. R. LEPSIUS, A. E. MARIETTE, G. C. C. MASPERO, EDUARD
MEYER, W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, J. GARDNER WILKINSON

TOGETHER WITH A CHARACTERISATION OF

EGYPT AS A WORLD INFLUENCE

BY

ADOLF ERMAN

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

CLAUDIUS ÆLIANUS, WM. BELOE, THE HOLY BIBLE, J. B. BIOT, SAMUEL BIRCH,
J. F. CHAMPOLLION, DIODORUS SICULUS, GEORG EBERS, AMELIA B.
EDWARDS, ROBERT HARTMANN, A. H. L. HEEREN, HERODOTUS,
FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, H. LARCHER, J. P. MAHAFFY, MANETHO,
AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, JOHN MAUNDEVILLE, MELA
POMPONIUS, L. MÉNARD, PAUSANIAS, PETRONIUS, PLINY,
PLUTARCH, R. POCOCKE, PETER LE PAGE RENOUF,
I. ROSELLINI, E. DE ROUGÉ, C. SAVARY, F. VON
SCHLEGEL, G. SERGI, SOLINUS, STRABO, ISAAC
TAYLOR, THE TURIN PAPYRUS AND THE
DYNASTIC LISTS OF KARNAK, ABYDOS,
AND SAQQARAH, A. WIEDEMANN,
HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, AND
THOMAS YOUNG

[54]

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

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[55]

EGYPT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

	Page
Introductory Essay. Egypt as a World Influence. By Dr. Adolf Erman	57
Egyptian History in Outline	65
Chapter I. The Egyptian Race and its Origin	77
Chapter II. The Old Memphis Kingdom	90
Chapter III. The Old Theban Kingdom	106
Chapter IV. The Restoration	126
Chapter V. The XIXth Dynasty	141
Chapter VI. The Finding of the Royal Mummies	155
Chapter VII. The Period of Decay	162
Chapter VIII. The Closing Scenes	180
Chapter IX. Manners and Customs of the Egyptians	196
Chapter X. The Egyptian Religion	219
Chapter XI. Egyptian Culture	240
Chapter XII. Concluding Summary of Egyptian History	263
Appendix A. Classical Traditions	267
Appendix B. The Problem of Egyptian Chronology	287
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	293
A General Bibliography of Egyptian History	295

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[56]

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[57]

EGYPT AS A WORLD INFLUENCE
A CHARACTERISATION OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

Written Specially for the Present Work

By Dr. ADOLF ERMAN

Professor of Egyptology in the University of Berlin; Director of the Berlin Egyptian Museum; Member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin, etc.

The countries that laid the foundation of our civilisation are not of those through which traffic passes on its way from land to land. Neither Babylon nor Egypt lies on one of the natural highways of the world; they lie hidden, encircled by mountains or deserts, and the seas that wash their shores are such as the ordinary seafarer avoids rather than frequents.

But this very seclusion, which to us, with our modern ideas, seems a thing prejudicial to culture, did its part toward furthering the development of mankind in these ancient lands; it assured to their inhabitants a less troublous life than otherwise falls to the lot of nations under primitive conditions. Egypt, more particularly, had no determined adversary, nor any that could meet her on equal terms close at hand. To west of her stretched a desert, leading by interminable wanderings to sparsely populated lands. On the east the desert was less wide indeed, but beyond it lay the Red Sea, and he who crossed it did but reach another desert, the Arabian waste. Southward for hundreds of miles stretched the barren land of Nubia, where even the waterway of the Nile withholds its wonted service, so that the races of the Sudan are likewise shut off from Egypt. And even the route from Palestine to the Nile, which we are apt to think of as so short and easy, involved a march of several days through waterless desert and marshy ground. These neighbour countries, barren as they are, were certainly inhabited, but the dwellers there were poor nomads; they might conquer Egypt now and again, but they could not permanently injure her civilisation.

Thus the people which dwelt in Egypt could enjoy undisturbed all the good things their country had to bestow. For in this singular river valley it was easier for men to live and thrive than in most other countries of the world. Not that the life was such as is led in those tropic lands where the fruits of earth simply drop into the mouth, and the human race grows enervated in a pleasant indolence; the dweller in Egypt had to cultivate his fields, to tend his cattle, but if he did so he was bounteously repaid for his labour. Every year the river fertilised his fields that they might bring forth barley and spelt and fodder for his oxen. He became a settled husbandman, a grave and diligent man, who was spared the disquiet and hardships endured by the nomadic tribes. Hence in this place there early developed a civilisation which far surpassed that of other nations, and with which only that of[58] far-off Babylonia, where somewhat similar local conditions obtained, could in any degree vie. And this civilisation, and the national characteristics of the Egyptian nation which went hand in hand with it, were so strong that they could weather even a grievous storm. For long ago, in the remote antiquity which lies far beyond all tradition, Egypt was once overtaken by the same calamity which was destined to befall her twice within historic times—she was conquered by Arab Bedouins, who lorded it over the country so long that the Egyptians adopted their language, though they altered and adapted it curiously in the process. This transplantation of an Asiatic language to African soil is the lasting, but likewise the only, trace left by this primeval invasion; in all other respects the conquerors were merged into the Egyptian people, to whom they, as barbarians, had nothing to offer. There is nothing in the ideas and reminiscences of later Egyptians to indicate that a Bedouin element had been absorbed into the race; in spite of their language the aspect they present to us is that of the true children of their singular country, a people to whom the desert and its inhabitants are something alien and incomprehensible. It is the same scene, mutatis mutandis, that was enacted in the full light of history at the rise of Islam; then, too, the unwarlike land was subdued by the swift onset of the Bedouins, who also imposed their language on it in the days of their rule; and yet the Egyptian people remains ever the same, and the people who speak Arabic to-day in the valley of the Nile have little in common with the Arabs of the desert.

Long before the period at which our historical knowledge begins, these Egyptian husbandmen had laid the foundations of their civilisation. They still went unclad and delighted to paint their bodies with green pigment; their ruler still wore a lion’s tail at his girdle and a strange savage-looking top-knot on his head; his sceptre was still a staff such as may be cut from the tree; but these staves already ruled a wide domain full of townships large and small. And in each of these there were already nobles, responsible to the king for the government thereof, looking with reverence toward his “great house,” and paying him tribute of their corn and cattle. And in the midst of the clay huts in every place stood a large hut, with wattled walls, the entrance adorned with poles; no other than the sanctuary of their god. Already they carved his image in wood and carried it round the town at festivals. Manifold are the accomplishments which the Egyptians have acquired by this time. They fashion the flint of the desert into knives and weapons of the utmost perfection of workmanship, they make cords, mats, and skiffs out of the rushes from the marsh-land, they are acquainted with the art of manufacturing tiles and earthen vessels from the clay of the soil. They carve in wood and ivory, and their carvings have already a peculiar character wholly their own. Moreover, they have prepared the way for the greatest of their achievements and have learned to record their ideas by drawing small pictures; the character is still for the most part pictographic, but even now certain particular pictures are used to denote sounds.

On this primitive period of the Egyptian nation we can only gaze from afar; we do not meet it face to face until the time when the two kingdoms, into which the country had hitherto been divided, were united for the first time by King Menes; this may have taken place after the middle of the fourth millennium. The union must have given a strong impulse to the life of the nation, and but a few generations after the days of King Menes the monuments that have come down to us exhibit most of the features characteristic of Egyptian civilisation in the later centuries. The might of[59] Egypt waxes apace; a few centuries more—at the period we are in the habit of speaking of as the Old Kingdom—and its development has progressed so far that nothing now seems beyond its strength. The gigantic buildings of the IVth Dynasty, whose great pyramids defy the tooth of time, bear witness to this. How proudly self-conscious must the race have been which strove thus to set up for itself a perpetual memorial! And if this passion for the huge is relinquished in succeeding centuries, it is merely a token of the further development of the nation; it has wearied of the colossal scale, and turns its attention to a greater refinement of life, the grace of which still looks forth upon us from the monuments of the Vth Dynasty.

Thus, even under the Old Kingdom, Egypt is a country in a high state of civilisation; a centralised government, a high level of technical skill, a religion in exuberant development, an art that has reached its zenith, a literature that strives upward to its culminating point,—this it is that we see displayed in its monuments. It is an early blossom, put forth by the human race at a time when other nations were yet wrapped in their winter sleep. In ancient Babylonia alone, where conditions equally favourable prevailed, the nation of the Sumerians reached a similar height. Any one who will compare these two ancient civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt cannot fail to see that they present many similarities of custom; thus in both the seal is rolled upon the clay, and both date their years according to certain events. The idea that some connection subsisted between them, and that then, as in later times, the products of both countries were dispersed by commerce through the world about them, is one that suggests itself spontaneously. But substantial evidence in support of this conjecture is still lacking and will probably ever remain so.

The great age of the Old Kingdom ends in a collapse, the body politic breaks up into its component parts, and the level of civilisation in the provinces sinks rapidly. But it rises again no less rapidly, when, at the close of the third millennium B.C., Egypt is once more united under a single sovereign.

The Middle Kingdom, as we customarily call this epoch, is a second season of efflorescence; indeed, it is the time upon which the Egyptians of succeeding generations looked back as the classic period of their literature; and many centuries later, boys at school were still patiently copying out the wise lessons which the first king of the period imparted to his son, or the adventures of his contemporary, Sinuhe, and thereby learning the elegance of style in which the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom were such adepts. This, moreover, is the epoch in which, so far as we know, the Egyptian arms were first carried to remoter lands; at this time Nubia became an Egyptian province, and the gold of its desert thenceforth belonged to the Pharaohs. The memory of this extension of the sway of Egypt survived among the Egyptians of later days, embodied in the semi-mythical figure of the great King Sesostris. When legend reports that this monarch likewise subjugated distant lands to the north, we have now no means of judging how much truth there may be in the tale. But this we can see, that at that time Egypt maintained commercial relations with the countries of the Mediterranean; for their dainty vases are found in Egyptian rubbish heaps of the period, and may have been imported into the Nile valley then, as later, as vessels for containing delicate foreign oils.

These palmy days of the second period of Egyptian history lasted for barely two hundred years, and then a time of political decadence again set in,[60] and Egypt for some centuries passes almost out of sight. One thing only do we know of its fortunes during this interval, namely, that it once more fell a prey to barbarian conquerors. The Hyksos—presumably a Bedouin tribe from the Syrio-Arabian desert—long reigned in Egypt as its lords. But the sway of these barbarians was naturally lax, and while the foreign great king abode in his camp on the Delta, Egyptian princes ruled as his vassals in the great cities of Egypt. And when, as was inevitable, the might of the barbarians waned, the might of these dynasts increased, till one of them, who ruled in the little city of Thebes in distant Upper Egypt, rose to such a height of power as to gain the mastery, not only over the other princes, but ultimately over the Hyksos themselves. About the year 1600 B.C. we find Egypt free once more, and under the sceptre of this same upper Egyptian line which has rendered the names of Thebes, its city, and Amen, its god, forever famous. The New Kingdom, the greatest age that the Nile Valley ever saw, has dawned.

The power of the kingdom waxed apace beyond its borders. Tehutimes I and his son, the indefatigable warrior, Tehutimes III, subdued a region that extended northward to northern Syria and southward to the Sudan; Egypt became the neighbour of the kingdom of Mitani [or Mitanni] on the Euphrates, of the rising power of Assyria, of ancient Babylonia. The two ancient civilisations which had been developing for thousands of years in Mesopotamia and the valley of the Nile were thus brought into direct contact, and we shall hardly be wrong in saying that during these centuries a great part of the civilised world whose heirs we are, met together in a common life. A brisk trade must have developed as a result of this new relation of country to country. The countries of the Mediterranean, where the so-called Mycenæan civilisation was then in its prime, had their part in it, as is proved by the discovery of numerous Mycenæan vessels in the tombs and ruins of the New Kingdom, and no less by the productions of Egyptian technical art which have been brought to light from the seats of Mycenæan civilisation.

The effect of these altered relations upon Egypt is easy to see. Vast wealth pours into the country and enables the Pharaohs to erect the gigantic fabric of the Theban temples. But at the very time when the spirit of ancient Egypt finds its most splendid transfiguration in these buildings, it begins to suffer loss and change. The old simple garb no longer beseems the lords of so great an empire; it must give place to a costlier. The antiquated literary language handed down from days of old is gradually superseded by the vulgar tongue. And if the Egyptians had up to this time looked proudly down upon all other nations as wretched barbarians, they must have found this narrow-minded view untenable when once they had met face to face the equally ancient civilisation of Babylonia and the vigorous growth of Syrian and Mediterranean cultures. The sons of Egypt’s Asiatic vassals attend her king, their daughters sit in his harem; Syrian mercenaries form one regiment of his bodyguard, foreign captives work on the edifices he builds. His officers, military and civil, have all made some stay on Asiatic soil, and his “letter-scribe” can read and write the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. The commerce which led foreign merchants to Egypt must have acted no less powerfully; they brought in silverware, wood of various kinds, horses and oxen, wine, beer, oil, and unguents, and carried away in return the manifold products of Egyptian industry and Egyptian crafts. In the long result not only does their traditional fear of foreigners pass away, but Asiatic fashions actually come into vogue[61] among cultured Egyptians. They coquet with foreign Canaanitish phrases, and think it permissible to offer up prayer to Baal [Bel] Astarte, and other gods of alien peoples. Asiatic singing-girls set the lyre of their native land in place of the old Egyptian harp, and many an intellectual possession may have migrated into Egypt with their songs.

It is far harder to gauge in detail the effect of Egyptian supremacy on Asia and Europe. We can see from the discoveries made in these countries what a quantity of small Egyptian wares in glass and faience, silver and bronze, was exported during this period, and we may further conclude that this was the time when the industrial art of Syrio-Phœnicia acquired its Egyptianised style. Similarly we may conjecture that it was then that our civilisation adopted all those things which were undoubtedly invented or perfected on Egyptian soil, and which we meet with even in the very oldest Greek and Etruscan times—the forms of household furniture, of columns, statues, weapons, seals, and many other things which still play their part in our daily life, though we are all unconscious of their Egyptian origin. At that period, when Egypt held the first place in Asia and Europe, a stream of Egyptian influence must have flowed out upon the whole world—a stream of which we still can guess the force only from these traces it has left.

As for the most precious lore that other nations might have learned from the Egyptians, we have no information concerning it whatever; though it is certain that their intellectual riches, their religion and poetry, their medical and arithmetical skill, can have been no less widely spread abroad than these productions of their technical dexterity. If, for example, our religion tells us of an immortality of the soul more excellent than the melancholy existence of the shades, the conception is one first met with in ancient Egypt; and Egyptian, likewise, is the idea that the fate of the dead is determined by the life led upon earth. These conceptions come to us by way of the Jewish religion. But may not the Jews have obtained them from Egypt, the land that bore its dead so heedfully in mind? The silent paths by which such thoughts pass from nation to nation are, it is true, beyond all showing. Or, if much in the gnomic poetry of the Hebrews reminds us strikingly of the abundant proverbial literature of Egypt, the idea of seeking its origin in the Nile Valley is one that occurs almost spontaneously. Here, too, of course, we have no proof to offer; connections of the kind can be no more than guessed at.

Thus the first part of the New Kingdom, or what we are in the habit of calling the XVIIIth Dynasty, is one of those periods which are pre-eminent as having advanced the progress of the world. To Egypt herself this co-operation with other nations might have brought a new and loftier development, had she been able really to assimilate the influx of new ideas. But of this the old nation was no longer capable; it had not vigour enough to shake off the ballast wherewith its thousands of years of existence had laden it.

About 1400 B.C. one of the Pharaohs—it was Amenhotep IV—did indeed make a serious attempt to break with custom and tradition and adapt the faith and thought of his people to the new conditions. He tried to create a new religion, in which only one god should be worshipped—the Sun, a divinity which could be equally adored by all peoples within his kingdom. And it sounds strangely un-Egyptian when the hymns to this new god insist that all men, Syrians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians, are alike dear to him; he has made them to differ in colour and speech, and has placed them in different lands, but he takes thought for all alike.

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But this attempt of the fourth Amenhotep came to naught, and the spirit of ancient Egypt triumphed over the abominable heretic. And with this triumph the fate of Egypt was sealed. True, in the next century, under the Sethos and the Ramses she enjoyed a period of external splendour, to which the great temples of Karnak, Luxor, and Medinet Habu still testify. But it was an illusory glory. Egypt was outworn and exhausted; she could no longer maintain her political ascendency, her might falls to pitiable ruin while younger and more vigorous nations in anterior Asia take the place that once was hers. And therewith begins the long and mournful death struggle of the Egyptian nation. The chief authority passes from the hands of the kings to those of the priests, from them to the commanders of the Syrian mercenaries; and then Egypt falls a prey to the Ethiopian barbarians, with whom the Assyrians next dispute it. For five long centuries the wretched nation is whelmed beneath these miseries, and yet, so far as we can see, they work no change in it; it is, in truth, exhausted utterly.

Once more, after the fall of the Assyrian empire, the political situation changes in Egypt’s favour, and Psamthek I and his successors won back wealth and power for her. But the aged nation had no longer the skill to take wise advantage of propitious fortune; it had no thoughts of its own, nor could it find fitting form for its new splendour. The Egyptians rested content with imitating in whimsical fashion, in all things, the Old Kingdom, the earliest period of their national glory, and the contemporaries of Neku and Apries [Uah-ab-Ra] took pleasure in feigning themselves the subjects of Cheops, in bearing the titles of his court, and writing in a language and orthography which had been in use two thousand years before. Learned antiquarianism is the distinguishing feature of this latest Egyptian development.

The end of the sixth century brought fresh calamities upon the land. Cambyses conquered it, and it became a Persian province. And although, after many a vain attempt at revolt, it shook off the foreign yoke for awhile, about 400 B.C., yet in a few decades it again fell into the hands of the Persians. Since those days Egypt has never had a ruler of her own blood; she has been the hapless spoil of any who chose to take her.

Alexander the Great was the first to whom the country fell, and at his death it became the heritage of his general, Ptolemy. In his family it was handed down, to become at length a province of the Roman Empire in the year 30 B.C. Throughout its length and breadth there is but one spot that thrives during this period, the new port of Alexandria, founded by the great king in the barren west of the Delta; this becomes a metropolis of the Greek world, and its merchants and manufacturers extend their trade by land and sea to every quarter. But this same Alexandria was ever something of an alien in Egypt, and the rest of the country took no part in the busy life that ran its round there; it grew corn and flax and wine and supplied them to the Roman world, it throve, but less for its own profit than that of the empire. Greek culture made its way but slowly there, and even in the great cities of the interior the Greek language and the Greek religion were never strong enough to displace the native idiom and the old faith. They influenced it by degrees, much as the European culture of to-day influences the ancient civilisation of the far East, but even as the Chinese remain Chinese in spite of railroads and the telegraph, so the Egyptians of the Græco-Roman period clung tenaciously to their own ways. They held fast all points of the national customs they only half understood; above all, they held to their ancient faith. And yet by that time the religion of Egypt was as degenerate[63] and debased as it could possibly be. As is apt to be the case with antiquated beliefs, its mere singularities had flourished at the expense of its wholesome side; cats, snakes, and crocodiles had now become the most sacred of beings in the eyes of the vulgar, and every kind of superstition was rampant. The depositaries of this religion were the members of a stereotyped hierarchy that had long lost touch with the outer world; they worshipped their gods according to the old tradition, used the ample wealth of the temples to build them new shrines in the old style, and enjoyed their fat benefices under the benevolent protection of the foreign government.

Thus the Egypt of this later day had long been empty of all vital force; it continued to exist, but only because the aged nation had lost the power of adapting itself to the new world. And yet this decrepit Egyptian character, with its dead religion, cast a singular spell over the sated spirit of the Roman world. The worship of Isis and Serapis spread far and wide; everywhere Egyptian sorcerers found a willing public for their superstitions. Roman tourists visited the ancient land, gazed in amazement at its wonders, while at home the nobles built themselves villas in the Egyptian style and adorned them with statues from Memphis. Even the most highly educated looked upon Egypt as a holy land, where everything was full of mystery and marvel, and piety and the true worship of the gods had their dwelling place from of old. And even after the fashionable predilection for things Egyptian had passed away, this notion of the mysterious and sacred land of Egypt remained fixed in men’s minds, and was handed on from generation to generation. Whenever ancient Egypt is mentioned in later days it suggests ideas of mystery, symbolism, and esoteric wisdom. And so anything to which it is desired to lend an air of mystery claims derivation preferably from Egypt, the secret lodges of the eighteenth century no less than the spiritualists and quacks of our own day. Ancient Egypt has acquired this reputation, and though, now that we know it better, we perceive that it is but little in accordance with her true character, all our researches will not be able to dispel the illusion of two thousand years. In the future, as in the past, the feeling with which the multitude regards the remains of Egyptian antiquity will be one of awestruck reverence. Nevertheless, another feeling would be more appropriate, a feeling of grateful acknowledgment and veneration, such as one of a later generation might feel for the ancestor who had founded his family and endowed it with a large part of its wealth. For though we are seldom able to say with certainty of any one thing in our possession that it is a legacy we have inherited from the Egyptians, yet no one who seriously turns his attention to such subjects can now doubt that a great part of our heritage comes from them. In all the implements which are about us nowadays, in every art and craft which we practise now, a large and important element has descended to us from the Egyptians. And it is no less certain that we owe to them many ideas and opinions of which we can no longer trace the origin, and which have long come to seem to us the natural property of our own minds.

This legacy of ideas, no less than of technical dexterity and artistic form, which the Egyptians have bequeathed to us, constitutes the service they have done to the human race. They cannot vie with the Greeks in intellectual gifts, and they never possessed the force that determines the course of history; but they were able to develop their capabilities earlier than other nations, and thus secured for the world the substantial groundwork of civilisation.

Thirty centuries have passed since ancient Egypt accomplished this, her real mission for the world; since then she has hardly done more than till her[64] soil in its service. Silently her existence has flowed on, and all the catastrophes which have befallen her since Roman times have not been able to stir her to fresh vigour. Christianity spread in Egypt early, but the philosophic labours accomplished there in connection with it are the work of the educated Hellenistic classes, not of the Egyptians proper. What these last added to Christianity, the anchoretic and monastic life, cannot be counted among its advantages. And when, in the fifth century, the Egyptians broke away from the Catholic Church, the barbarian element to which the nation succumbed thenceforward finally triumphed. The tie that had bound the Egyptians to European civilisation was severed, and the Arab conquest had only to set the seal to this divorce.

This same Arab conquest, which, in the course of centuries, went so far as to rob the ancient nation of its ancient language, and imposed a new faith upon the great majority of its inhabitants, was powerless to inspire it with new life. Outwardly Egypt has become Arab, but the Egyptians had but a very small share in the intellectual life of the Arab Middle Ages, a share probably not much larger than that which they had taken in Alexandrian culture.

Once again, in our own days, the opportunity of rousing itself afresh is offered to the Egyptian nation. It is once more linked with Europe, and its prosperity has advanced with astounding rapidity. From all sides new influences stream in upon the ancient people, and we would fain indulge in the hope that now at length it might awake to new life. But, unhappily, this hope has but little prospect of fulfilment, and all things will but run again the course they ran long ago in Græco-Roman days. The foreigner will prosper in Egypt and invest it with a tinge of his own civilisation, the work of European civilisation will inspire an Egyptian here and there with a profound sympathy. But the nation itself will remain untouched, it will rise up no more, it has lived itself out and its intellectual capabilities are exhausted. In time to come, the Egyptian nation will probably do no more for the human race than diligently provide it with cotton and onions, as it does to-day.

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EGYPTIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY, THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

Until somewhat recently it has been customary to think of Egyptian history as constituting a single uniform period. Before our generation it was quite impossible for any one to realise the extreme length of time which this history involves; or if a certain few did realise it, a consensus of opinion among the many forbade the acceptance of their estimate. Now, however, limitations of time are no longer a bugbear to the historian, and we are coming to realise the full import of the fact that when one speaks of historic Egypt he is referring to an epoch at least four thousand years in extent. Prior to the nineteenth century discoveries, the historian had only the most meagre supply of material dealing with any epoch prior to that age of the Trojan War which marked the extreme limits of the historic view in Greece; but now we understand that the men who built the Pyramids in Egypt were at least as far removed from Homer as Homer is removed from us: and it is but the expression of an historical platitude to say that a vast stretch of Egyptian history must lie back of the Pyramids; for no one any longer supposes that a people recently emerged from barbarism could have created such structures.

Throughout classical times very little was known of the history of Egypt, except what was contained in the fragmentary remains of Manetho and the more lengthy descriptions of Herodotus and Diodorus. There were other references, of course, but for anything like a comprehensive knowledge of the history of the country it would have been necessary to understand the Egyptian language and decipher the hieroglyphics; and no person throughout classical times had such understanding.

There were practically no additions to the world’s knowledge of ancient Egyptian history from classical times till about the beginning of the nineteenth century. The stimulus to the new knowledge that was then acquired came about chiefly through the Egyptian expedition of Napoleon. The French expedition included various scientists who made a concerted effort to study the antiquities, and to transport as many of them as might be to Paris. In the latter regard the expedition failed, as in some more important particulars, through the interference of the British, with the result that some of the most important antiquities, including the since famous Rosetta stone,[66] found their way to the British Museum. A large amount of material, however, was transported to Paris, and gave occupation to the savants of France for about a generation before the final publication of results in a monumental work.

But before this publication, thanks to the efforts of Thomas Young in England, and Champollion in France, the hieroglyphics had been deciphered, and at last the almost inexhaustible word treasures of Egypt were made available as witnesses for history. Very naturally, a large number of explorers entered the field, and from that day till this there has been no dearth of Egyptologists either in the field of exploration or of interpretation. Prominent among these in the first half of the century were the pupils of Champollion, the Italians, Rossellini and Salvolini. But the most important work, perhaps, was done by the German, Lepsius, who came to be recognised as the foremost Egyptologist of his time, and whose Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien is still one of the most monumental works on the subject. In England, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson took up the study of Egyptian life in particular, and deduced from the inscriptions of the monuments and from the pictures a comprehensive understanding of Egyptian manners and customs. The various workers at the British Museum, beginning with Birch and continuing with Renouf and with E. A. Wallis Budge, have added an ever increasing complement to our knowledge of Egyptian archæology.

The country of Champollion has been ably represented in more recent time by Mariette and Maspero; while in Germany, Dümichen, Meyer, and Wiedemann have worked and written exhaustively, the former with special reference to archæology, the two latter with reference to history. But no one else perhaps has given quite such attention to the language of old Egypt as Professor Adolf Erman. The field that Wilkinson occupied earlier in the century has also been entered by Professor Erman, and the most recent and authoritative studies of Egyptian manners and customs are those that he has deduced from the papyri and the monumental inscriptions. Wilkinson depended largely upon pictorial representations for his information, but Erman has been able to go beyond these to the subtler and sometimes more illuminative written records.

As to the early history of Egypt, no one else has made such exhaustive studies as Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, whose publications cover a wide range, from the most technical to the relatively popular. For a strictly popular presentation of the subject, however, the works of George Ebers, of Baron Bunsen, and of Amelia B. Edwards should be consulted, together with the books of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson and the works of Professor Adolf Erman.

A more comprehensive account of these writers and their labours, together with reasonably complete bibliographies of the entire subject, will be found at the close of the history of Egypt. The character of the materials with which the Egyptologists have worked in creating a new history of one of the oldest civilisations, will be revealed as we proceed.

The Egyptians of history are probably a fusion of an indigenous white race of northeastern Africa and an intruding people of Asiatic origin. In the Archaic period independent kings ruled in the Delta region (Kings of the Red Crown) and in Upper Egypt (Kings of the White Crown). Under King Menes the two crowns were probably first united, and the Dynastic period begins. According to Egyptian traditions the pre-dynastic ages were[67] filled with dynasties of gods and demigods, who were perhaps primeval chiefs or tribal leaders. Monuments of the pre-dynastic period are earthenware vases, jars, sculptured ivory objects, and flint implements.

The dynasties which formed the foundation of all classifications of Egyptian history are based upon the lists of the Egyptian priest Manetho, who wrote a history of Egypt in the time of the Ptolemies. The original work of Manetho has not come down to us, and it is quite impossible to restore it in extenso from the fragmentary excerpts that are preserved. The writings of Josephus and of Eusebius are our chief sources for Manetho’s lists, but Josephus copied the lists only in part, and Eusebius seemingly knew them only at second or third hand, when, it is suspected, they had been somewhat perverted in the interests of Hebrew chronology. Nevertheless, the dynasties of Manetho as we now know them probably do not very radically differ from the original lists. Beyond question these are based upon authentic Egyptian documents, but there is a good deal of confusion and much difference of opinion among Egyptologists, as to whether some of the dynasties were not contemporaneous; and for many periods the lists are only provisional.

It is notable, however, that the somewhat recent discoveries of original Egyptian lists, such as the so-called Turin Papyrus and the dynastic lists of Karnak and Abydos, tend to corroborate the lists of Manetho, and show that he was an historian of very great merit. It is convenient also to regard the grand divisions of Egyptian history noted by Manetho, namely, the Old Memphis Kingdom, comprising the first ten dynasties; the Middle Kingdom or Old Theban Kingdom, comprising the XIth to the XVIIth Dynasties; and the New Theban Kingdom, comprising the remaining dynasties.[1]

As to the dates employed in the following chronology, a word of explanation is necessary. Neither Manetho’s lists nor any other available sources enable us at present to supply exact dates for the earlier periods of Egyptian history with any precision. Authorities differ as to the early period to the extent of more than three thousand years. Thus Champollion gives the date 5867 B.C. for the beginning of the Ist Dynasty, while Wilkinson supplies for the same event the date 2320 B.C. Later authorities are pretty fully agreed that such a date as that of Wilkinson is much too recent. Meyer fixes upon 3180 B.C. as the minimum date, and no doubt he would very willingly admit that the probable date is much more remote. For our present purpose it has been thought well to adopt an intermediate date, as in some sense striking an average among divergent opinions. The dates of Brugsch, which agree rather closely with those of Mariette and Petrie, have in the main been followed here, with certain modifications made necessary by recent discoveries, chiefly with reference to synchronism with known dates of the Assyrian empire and other countries. It will be understood, therefore, that all the earlier dates of this chronology are accepted as merely approximative, the approximation becoming closer and closer as we come down the centuries. At the middle of the XVIIIth Dynasty the dates cannot be more than twenty years out of the way, while from the XXIInd onward the probable error is very small indeed, vanishing entirely with the accession of Psamthek I of the XXVIth Dynasty.

For present purposes it is undesirable to give a complete list of the names of Egyptian kings. Fuller details as to monarchs and events will be given elsewhere in our text. But the purposes of our preliminary[68] view are better subserved by confining attention to the more important Pharaohs, and to the principal events that give picturesqueness and interest to Egyptian history.

We take up now the synoptical view of the successive dynasties. Such a survey will, it is believed, furnish the reader with the best possible preparation for the full comprehension of the more detailed presentation that is to follow.

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER I. THE EGYPTIAN RACE AND ITS ORIGIN

Two theories as to the origin of the Egyptians have been prominent, the one supposing that they came originally from Asia, the other that their racial cradle lay in the upper regions of the Nile, particularly in Ethiopia. Even to-day there is no agreement among Egyptologists as to which of these theories is correct. Among the earlier students of the subject, Heeren was prominent in pointing out an alleged analogy between the form of skull of the Egyptian and that of the Indian races. He believed in the Indian origin of the Egyptians.

One of the most recent authorities, Professor Flinders Petrie, inclines to the opinion that the Egyptians were of common origin with the Phœnicians, and that they came into the Nile region from the land of Punt, across the Red Sea. Professor Maspero, on the other hand, inclines to the belief in the African origin of the race; and the latest important anthropological theory, as propounded by Professor Sergi, contends for the Ethiopic origin of the entire Mediterranean race, of which the Egyptians are a part. According to this theory, a race whose primitive seat of residence was in the upper regions of the Nile spread gradually to the north, finally invading Asia by way of the Isthmus of Suez, and crossing to the peninsulas of southern Europe by way of Crete and Cyprus and Sicily, and perhaps also, after a long journey to the west along the Mediterranean coast of Africa, by way of the Straits of Gibraltar.

The true scientific status of the matter amounts merely to a confession of almost entire ignorance. The theory of Sergi, just referred to, finds a certain support in the data of cranial measurements, but it would be going[78] much beyond warrantable conclusions to affirm anything like certainty for the inferences drawn from all the observations as yet available. The historian is obliged, therefore, to fall back upon the simple fact that for a good many thousands of years before the Christian era, a race of people of unknown origin inhabited the Nile Valley, and had attained a very high state of civilisation. Whatever the origin of this people, and however diversified the racial elements of which it was composed, the climatic conditions of Egypt had long since imposed upon the entire population an influence that welded all the diverse elements into a single racial mould, so that, as Professor Maspero points out, at the very dawn of Egyptian history the inhabitants of the entire land of Egypt constituted a single race, speaking one language and showing very little diversity of culture.

It is one of the standing surprises for the student of antiquity that the most massive structures ever built by man should be found in Egypt, dating from a period so remote as to be almost prehistoric. One finds it hard to avoid the feeling that there was a race sprung suddenly to a very high plane of civilisation, as if by a sheer leap from barbarism; but, of course, no modern student of the subject considers the matter in this light. It is uniformly accepted that a vast period of time lies back of the Pyramids, in which the Egyptians were slowly working their way upward. Professor Maspero estimates that for at least eight or ten thousand years the people had inhabited this land, all along developing their peculiar civilisation. Of course such an estimate makes no claim to historical accuracy; it is only a general conclusion based upon what seems a reasonable rate of progress.

The recent explorations in Egypt have endeavoured to penetrate the mysteries of what has hitherto been the prehistoric period, and these efforts have met with a certain measure of success. In the Fayum, Professor Petrie has made excavations that revealed the remains of a much earlier period than that of the first dynasties hitherto recognised. Among other interesting relics, sarcophagi were found containing mummified bodies in a marvellous state of preservation. One of these now exhibited at the British Museum in London shows the body of a man of full proportions lying on his side with knees folded up against his body. Unlike the mummies of the later Egyptian period, this ancient effigy has no wrappings of any kind, but so remarkable are the results of the processes of embalming to which[79] it has been subjected, that the form of the various members, and the features even, have been preserved with marvellously little shrinkage or distortion. The skin is indeed dry and dark, yet its resemblance to the skin of a living person of a dark-hued race is so striking that one can hardly realise, in looking at it, that the corpse before him is the body of a person who lived perhaps eight or ten thousand years ago.

As to other remains found by the later explorations, among the most interesting and suggestive are flint implements chipped in the manner characteristic of the Palæolithic or rough stone age. We are guarded, however, against drawing too sweeping inferences from these antiquities by Professor Petrie’s assurance that the Egyptians continued to use such chipped flint implements throughout the period from the IVth to the Xth Dynasty. It has been doubted whether any of these stone implements can be regarded as of strictly prehistoric origin, or whether, indeed, any of the antiquities discovered in Egypt evidence an uncivilised stage of racial history. The latest opinion, however, is that the makers of the pottery and flint implements were the aborigines of the country, who were displaced by the invasion of the Egyptians of history.

The most important excavations of the last eight or ten years, carried on by Amélineau, Petrie, and De Morgan have had for their object the collection of remains of this pre-dynastic era.

We are not likely to hear more of the contention that the archaic objects found at Naqada and other places were the work of a “New Race” of invaders that had intruded somewhere in those dark ages between the VIth and XIth Dynasties, for this long and bitter controversy is now replaced by a state of complete agreement among the authorities that the people who could lay claim to the pottery and flint objects were the aborigines, living in Egypt when the Egyptians of history invaded the country.

In their possession of the country these aborigines were ousted by the race which gradually loomed upon the historic horizon and to whom it has long been the custom to assign Menes as the first king, treating the preceding periods as the time of the gods and demigods, to whose rule tradition assigns an epoch which varies from 1000 to nearly 40,000 years. But the indications are that within a few years there will be much light thrown on the period preceding King Menes. Just why this king should have been placed at the head of the Ist Dynasty now seems quite clear. He was the first “Lord of the Two Lands”—the united Upper and Lower Egypt.

It must be recognised by any one who would gain a clear idea of national existence, that the character of a race is enormously influenced by the physical and climatic features of its environment. There have been differences of opinion among students of the subject as to the amount of change that may be effected by altered surroundings. But whoever considers the matter in the light of modern ideas, can hardly be much in doubt as to the answer to any question thus raised.

If it be admitted that all the races of mankind sprang originally from a single source,—an hypothesis upon which students of the most diverse habits of thought are agreed,—then in the last analysis it would appear that we must look to such environing conditions as soil and climate for the causes of all the differences that are observed among the different races of the earth to-day. The man inhabiting equatorial regions has a dark skin and certain well-marked traits of character, simply because his ancestors for almost endless generations have been subjected to the influences of a tropical climate; and the light-skinned inhabitant of northern Europe[80] owes his antagonistic characteristics to the widely different climatic conditions of high latitudes. And what is true of these extreme instances, is no less true of all intermediate races.

In a word, then, the Egyptian would not have been the individual that we know, had he not lived in the valley of the Nile. The Mesopotamian required the environment of the Tigris and Euphrates to develop his typical characteristics, and similarly with the Greek and Roman, and with the members of every other race.

But, in accepting this view, one must not be blinded to the fact that the changes wrought by environment in the character of a race, are of necessity extremely slow. The peculiar traits that give racial distinction to any company of people have not been attained except through many generations of slow alteration; and such is the conservative power of heredity that the characteristics thus slowly stamped upon a race are well-nigh indelible. How pertinacious is their hold is best illustrated in the case of the modern Jews, who retain their racial identity though scattered in all regions of the globe. With this illustration in mind, it cannot be matter for surprise that any race that remains in the same environment, and as a rule does not mingle with other races, shall have retained the same essential characteristics throughout the historic period. That such is really the historic fact regarding any particular race of antiquity, might not at first sight be obvious. It might seem, for example, that the modern Egyptian, who plays so insignificant a part in the world-history of the nineteenth century, must be a very different person indeed from his ancient progenitor, who maintained for many centuries the dominant civilisation of the world.

But it must not be forgotten that national standards are relative; in other words, that the status of a people depends, not alone upon the plane of civilisation of that people itself, but quite as much upon the relative plane of civilisation of its neighbours. When the Egyptians sank from power, it was not so much that they lost their inherent capacity for progress, as that other nations outstripped them in the race, and came presently to dominate and subjugate them, and thus to stamp out their ambition. In support of this view, note the fact that the Egyptians again and again, at intervals of many centuries, were able to rouse themselves from a lethargy imposed by their conquerors, and to regain for a time their old position of supremacy. But the best tangible illustration of the fixity of the character of a race is furnished by the modern historians, who have at the same time most profoundly studied the ancient conditions as recorded on the monuments, and, while doing so, have been brought in contact with the present inhabitants of the Nile Valley.

No other scholars of the present generation have made more profound investigations than Professor Petrie and Professor Erman, both of whom have been led to comment on the extraordinary similarity of manner and custom and inherent characteristics between the ancient and the modern Egyptians. Here is Professor Erman’sg verdict:

“The people who inhabited ancient Egypt still survive in their descendants, the modern Egyptians. The vicissitudes of history have changed both language and religion, but invasions and conquests have not been able to alter the features of this ancient people. The hundreds and thousands of Greeks and Arabs who have settled in the country seem to have been absorbed into it; they have modified the race in the great towns, where their numbers were considerable, but in the open country they scarcely produced any effect. The modern fellah resembles his forefather of four thousand[81] years ago, except that he speaks Arabic, and has become a Mohammedan. In a modern Egyptian village, figures meet one that might have walked out of the pictures in an ancient Egyptian tomb. We must not deny that this resemblance is partly due to another reason besides the continuance of the old race. Each country and condition of life stamps the inhabitants with certain characteristics. The nomad of the desert has the same features, whether he wanders through the Sahara or the interior of Arabia; and the Copt, who has maintained his religion through centuries of oppression, might be mistaken at first sight for a Polish Jew, who has suffered in the same way. The Egyptian soil, therefore, with its ever constant conditions of life, has always stamped the population of the Nile Valley with the same seal.

“As a nation the Egyptians appear to have been intelligent, practical, and very energetic, but lacking poetical imagination; this is exactly what we should expect from peasants living in this country of toilsome agriculture. ‘In his youth the Egyptian peasant is wonderfully docile, sensible, and active; in his riper years, owing to want and care, and the continual work of drawing water, he loses the cheerfulness and elasticity of mind which made him appear so amiable and promising.’ This picture of a race, cheerful by nature, but losing the happy temperament and becoming selfish and hardened, represents also the ancient people.”

But, however freely it may be admitted that soil and climate put their seal upon a race, opinions will always differ as to just how the racial characteristics are to be interpreted. In the case of all Oriental nations the European mind has found such interpretation peculiarly difficult. The Egyptians are no exception to this rule, as we shall see.a

THE COUNTRY AND ITS INHABITANTS

The whole of North Africa is covered by a great desert, bordered only on the northwest by a considerable arable district, which at present forms the states of Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis. Except for this, if we set aside a single strip of coast land in the country between the two Syrtes (Tripolis, Leptis) and in Cyrenaica (Bengari), this whole territory is totally destitute of all higher civilisation. It forms the natural frontier of the Mediterranean world, beyond which not even ancient civilisation ever penetrated. The interior of Africa was practically unknown to the Greek and Roman world.

The formidable desert land, embracing more than three million square miles, contains a series of depressed levels in which springs are harboured, and vegetation, especially the date-palm, thrives. These are the oases. Here, and here only, are permanent human settlements possible. At the same time the oases form stations in the wearisome and difficult way through the desert, where the trader who wants to acquire goods in the countries on the other side is exposed not only to the dangers that threaten him from want of water, loss of his way, and sand-storms, but also to the attacks of vagrant robber hordes that traverse the desert in nomadic confusion.

East of the great desert, at a distance of a few days’ journey from the Arabian Gulf, lies a straggling fruitful valley, which in some sense may be regarded as an oasis of colossal dimensions. This is Egypt, the valley of the Lower Nile. On both sides it is bounded by desert land. On the west rises the plateau of the Libyan Desert, flat, absolutely barren, covered with impenetrable sand-banks. On the east a rocky highland of solid quartz and chalk rises in a gradual slope, at the back of which the crystalline masses of the so-called Arabian Mountains ascend to a height of about six[82] thousand feet. In geological structure the two territorial districts are entirely different, but, although it is true that nomadic hordes can, at a pinch, keep body and soul together in the eastern desert, and that they are not entirely cut off from vegetation, from springs and cisterns in which the rainwater is gathered up from storm and tempest, civilisation is as much sealed to them as it is to the Libyan waste, through which it is impossible to penetrate, and which is habitable only in the oases.

Between the two deserts, occupying a breadth of from fifteen to thirty-three miles, lies the depression forming the valley of Egypt. It forms the bed which the river has dug for itself in the soft chalky soil with untiring activity. Formerly, thousands of years ago,—thousands indeterminate,—it poured through the country in riotous cascades, the traces of which are still clearly recognisable in many spots. Gradually the river cleaned out the whole bed and established a regular surface level. When the historical period begins, the creative career of the river has already long been completed; from this time forward, the Nile flows in manifold curves and with numerous tributaries through the wrinkled valley, which it floods to a considerable degree only in midsummer, when the Ethiopian snow melts and seeks an outlet. The fertile land extends precisely as far as the waters of the Nile penetrate, or are guided by the hand of man in the flood season; a sharp line of demarcation separates the black fertile land formed of the muddy deposit left by the river, from the gray-yellow of the bordering desert. The breadth of the fertile territory is variable; on an average it covers eight, rarely more than ten, miles. Only at the mouth of the Nile it expands to the wide marsh lands of the Delta, intersected by numerous swamps and lakes.

Also on the south the border-land of Egypt has a sharp natural line of demarcation. A little above the 24th degree of latitude, at Gebel Silsilis, the sandstone plateau joins right on the river, higher up covering the whole of Nubia. The narrow neck of river at Gebel Silsilis is the southern boundary of fertile Egypt. A significant saga rising from the Arabian name of the mountain range (Silsilis means “the chain”) tells how once upon a time the stream was cut off by a chain that connected the opposite mountains. About eight miles higher up, at Assuan (Syene) a mountain range of granite and syenite opposes the course of the river like a cross-rail. True, the river has broken through the hard stone, but it has not had the power to rub it away, as it has done with the chalk-stone of Egypt; in numerous rapids it forces a passage between neighbouring rocks and innumerable islands raised from its bed. Without doubt, however, the torrent has continued to make its bed deeper here also. We know from old Egyptian accounts of the Nile levels that about four[83] thousand years ago, at the time of the XIIth Dynasty, the Nile at the fortresses of Semneh and Kumneh, above the second cataract, must have been at least eight metres higher than it is at the present day. This can be explained only by supposing that, since then, the river must have burrowed an equivalent depth in the rocks of the cataract district.

This “First Cataract,” which makes real navigation very nearly an impossibility,—a vessel can be steered through the rapids only with considerable difficulty and danger,—has always formed the southern boundary of Egypt. Above it, the Nile flows in a great curve through the Nubian sandstone plateau. At numerous places its way is blocked by hard stone material, through which it digs a bed in cataracts. The river valley has throughout no more than a breadth of from five to nine miles. The fertile land, which at the time of the old empire was pretty thickly wooded, confines itself, where it does not cease altogether, to a narrow seam on the banks, so that the inhabitants, in order to leave as little as possible of it unutilised, formed their villages on the barren, unfruitful heights above it. The whole stretch of 1000 miles from Khartum to the first cataract contains at the present day only 1125 square miles of laid-out land. South of the Tropic only, the country on the Red Sea is gradually becoming capable of fertilisation; for the most part, here it bears the character of the Steppes. Also in the Nile, therefore, Egypt is almost totally shut off from Africa. The campaign of the English against the Mahdi has again given us a vigorous picture of how wearisome and difficult is the connection here; of the dangers that a tropical sun, a deficiency of habitations, and the difficulties of communication offer to a small army that tries to advance here.

Egypt is the narrowest country in the world; embracing an expanse of 570 miles in length, it does not contain more than 12,000 square miles of fertile land, that is to say, it is not larger than the kingdom of Belgium. It is necessary to keep this fact clearly in view, especially as the maps accessible may only too easily convey quite a false impression, because they include the desert land within the boundary line of Egypt, and as a rule do not distinguish it by any sign from the fertile land. The ancient indigenous conception is in complete accordance with the geographical character of the land. Egypt, or Kamit, as the country is termed in the indigenous language (the name certainly signifies “the dark country”), is only the fertile valley of the Nile. Here only do the Egyptians dwell. The oases in the west and the “red country” (Tasherit) in the east, i.e. the naked, reddish, glimmering plateaus of the Arabian Desert, are reckoned as foreign with[84] consistent regularity, and they are not inhabited by Egyptians. The true state of affairs is quite accurately portrayed in the oracle which decreed, “Egypt is all the country watered by the Nile, and Egyptians are all those who dwell below the town Elephantine and drink Nile water.”

Herodotus defines Egypt accurately as a “bequest of the river”; to the river alone it owes its fertility and its well-being. But for the flowing river, the sand of the Libyan Desert would cover that whole wrinkled valley, which, with the aid of the river, has become one of the most fertile and most thickly populated countries on the earth.

At the time in which our historical information begins, we find the Lower Nile Valley inhabited by a race which, after the precedent of the Greeks, we call Egyptians. Whence the word comes, we know not; we can only say that Aigyptos in the first instance denotes the river—almost without exception in the Odyssey it is thus. The word was then transferred to the country and its inhabitants, and the river received the name of Neilos (Nile), the origin of which is equally obscure. An indigenous name of the population did not exist; the Egyptians denoted themselves, in distinction from foreigners, simply as “men” (rometu). Their country, as we have already mentioned, they called Kamit, “Black Country”; the river was named Ha-pi. Semitic people called Egypt, we know not why, Mior or Musr (Hebrew Mizraim, the termination being a very common one with the names of localities). In its Arabian form, Masr, this word, at the present day, has become the indigenous name of the country and of its capital, which we call Cairo. From the name Egyptians, on the contrary, was developed the modern denotation of the Christian successors of the old indigenous population, the Copts.

Controversy has been abundant and vigorous with regard to the ethnographical place of the Egyptians. While philologists and historians assume a relation with the neighbouring Asiatic races, separating the Egyptians by a sharp line of distinction from the negro race, ethnologists and biologists, Robert Hartmann pre-eminent amongst them, have defined them as genuine children of Africa who stood in indisputable physical relation with the races of the interior of the continent. And certainly in the type of the modern Egyptian there are points of contact with the typical negro, and we shall not here dispute the validity of the possible contention that a gradual transition from the Egyptians to the negroes of the Sudan can be demonstrated, and that in the Nile Valley we never are confronted with an acute ethnological contrast.

We should note, however, that an acute contradiction in races is nowhere on earth perceptible. Everywhere may be found members to bridge over the gap, and the classification which we so much need does not ever start with the intermediate stages, but with the extremes in which the racial type finds its purest illustration.

Moreover, the type of the modern Egyptian cannot straightway determine the question as to the origin of the ancient Egyptian population, even if we do not take into account the difficult problem of how far climate and soil exercise a moderating influence upon a race. The inhabitants of the Lower Nile Valley at the time of the New Kingdom, and from that time forward in the whole course of history, have mingled so extensively with pure African blood, that it would have been a miracle if no assimilation had taken place. It is an undoubted fact that the Turks belong to the peoples resembling the Mongolians; but who will put the modern Osman in the same line with the Chinaman, or fail to recognise the assimilation to[85] the Armenian, Persian, Semitic, Greek type? The same is true, for example, of the Magyars. A strictly analogous state of things is found in Egypt. It has been proved that, in the skull-formation of the modern Egyptian, the influence of the African element is more clearly discernible than in the days of the ancients. Moreover, a careful comparison leads to the conclusion that in ancient, as in modern Egypt, there are two coexistent types: one resembling the Nubian more closely, who is naturally more strongly represented in Upper Egypt than in Memphis and Cairo; and one sharply distinguished from him whom we may define as the pure Egyptian. Midway between these two stands a hybrid form, represented in numerous examples and sufficiently accounted for by the intermixture of the two races.

While the Nubian type is closer akin to the pure negro type and is indigenous in Africa, we must regard the purely Egyptian type as foreign to this continent; this directs us toward the assumption that the most ancient home of the Egyptian is to be sought in Asia. The Egyptians have depicted themselves, times out of number, on monuments, and enable us clearly enough to recognise their type.

For the most part, they are powerful, close-knit figures, frequently with vigorous features. Not infrequently, as Erman has sagaciously suggested, the heads have a “clever, witty expression just like what we are accustomed to meet with in cunning old peasants.” We have a recurrence of the same trait in several early Roman portraits. Side by side with this we have finely cut features: for instance, we are reminded of the almost effeminate expression in the head of Ramses II. The Egyptian type is altogether different from the negro type; the structure of the nose, for instance, is delicate for the most part, and there is no trace of prognathismus, or the protrusion of the lower part of the face.

On the monuments the colour of the skin in male Egyptians, who in ancient days went totally naked but for a loin cloth, is a red-brown. On the other hand, the women, who were clad in a long robe and were not equally exposed to the effects of air and sun, are painted in a lighter brown or yellow. In quite similar fashion the Greeks of old represented men on their vases as red and women as white. We should not forget that the art of depicting the finer shades of colours in paint had not yet been learnt.

Just as the Egyptians are distinguished from the population of the interior of Africa, so they have their nearest kinsmen in the inhabitants of the northern zone of the continent. West of them, on the coast lands on the Mediterranean as well as in the oases of the desert, dwell races which are comprehended by Egyptians under the term Thuhen. Following the precedent of the Greeks, we have transferred to all of them the name of the Libyans, that race which was settled in the territory of Cyrene, where the Greeks first learned of their existence. In Egyptian memorials we find them again under the name of Rebu (we should observe here, once for all, that neither Egyptian speech nor Egyptian writing has an L, and so in foreign words every R may be read as an L). The name Rebu, as the Greek form of the name tells us, was pronounced Lebu [Libu]. To the east of these Libyans proper, in the desert plateau of the country of Marmarica, dwell the Tuhennu, who spread as far as the borders of Egypt, and even also settled in the western portion of the Delta. Further westward, presumably in the neighbourhood of the Syrtes, we find the Mashauasha. The Greeks, especially Herodotus, have preserved for us a great number of other names. All these tribes, to which the dwellers in the oases also belong, are most closely related to one another, and form, together with the inhabitants of[86] western North Africa, the Numidians and the Moors, a great group of nations, which we denote by the term Libyan or Moorish, or in modern terminology the group of Berber nations. The Libyans are light in colour; on the Egyptian monuments they are represented by a white-gray skin tint.

In the Moors the old type is to some extent still preserved. They are warlike, brave tribes, not without talent. But none of them, it is true, developed a high civilisation, although they adopted certain elements of civilisation from the Egyptians, and later on, in Mauretania, from the Carthaginians. According to the representations on the monuments, the custom of tattooing their arms and legs ruled amongst them; among the engraved signs we also meet with the symbol of Nit, the patron goddess of Saïs, whose population would appear to have consisted chiefly of Libyans.

As in the west, Libyans and Moors, to judge from their language, are connected with the Egyptians, so this is true in the south of a great number of tribes east of the Nile Valley. These are the ancestors of the modern Bedia tribes (i.e. of the Ababde, the Bischarin, and others, dwelling in the deserts and steppes east of the Upper Nile Valley), and of their relations the Falaschas, the Gallas, the Somali. Among them the country and people of Cush attained particular pre-eminence in antiquity; they were the southeastern neighbours of the Egyptians, who had their original settlements in the wastes and steppes of the mountain country east of the Nile. In the course of history they press forward against the negroes of the Nile Valley, the ancestors of the modern Nubians, and finally establish here a powerful empire.

The Hebrews and the Assyrians are accustomed to call this country Cush, and we too are in the habit of using this name Cushite instead of Egyptian. The Greeks call them Ethiopians. In the Christian era this name was adopted by a people living much farther south, the Semitic inhabitants of the great highlands of Habesh (Abyssinia), and this people and its language (Ge-ez) are therefore to-day called Ethiopian. But care must be taken not to transfer this term of modern usage in its modern significance to the circumstances of antiquity. The Ethiopia of antiquity is geographically about coterminous with modern Nubia.

A still more bewildering confusion has been engendered by the term Cushites. In the Old Testament, in the review of the races taking their departure from Noah, the name Cush has been transferred to Babylonia (Gen. x. 8; possibly also in the story of the Fall, ii. 13). This is to be explained by the fact that the robber mountain horde of the Kossæans, or, as they called themselves, the Kasshu, maintained supremacy for centuries in Babylonia; this name was identified by the Hebrew narrator with that denoting the African tribe. Recent experts have derived the most illusory consequences from this misunderstanding. In consequence of it the Cushites have become for them an Asiatic-African aboriginal people of wide extent, appearing everywhere and never at home; and wherever we encounter riddles in the matter handed down to us, or a bold combination has to be made possible, these Cushites are trotted out, only to sink again into nothingness as soon as they have done their work. Conceptions of this character have found their way into ethnographical, philological, and historical works of high merit.

From the abortion that has grown out of the amalgamation of the Babylonian robber and warrior hordes with an African tribe, originally[87] of quite a low grade of cultivation and the scantiest mental endowment, has been manufactured a people to whom the beginning of all civilisation has been referred, to whose inspiration the great monuments of Egypt, as of Babylonia, are supposed to owe their origin, but whose personality ceases to be tangible anywhere from the moment that positive historical evidence begins.

In the face of this we must again dwell on the fact that the Kossæans and the Cushites have not the slenderest historical connection with each other. The latter is a very real people that gradually absorbed a certain degree of external civilisation from the Egyptians.

With these East African nationalities on the one side, and the Libyans and Moors on the other, the Egyptians form a great group of nations whose languages are closely related to one another, and whom one may designate as North Africans. The North African languages again, in their grammatical structure as well as in their vocabulary, reveal a kindred spirit, however distant, with that in the language of their eastern Asiatic neighbours, the Semites, i.e. the inhabitants of Arabia, Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia. Especially in the most ancient form of Egyptian handed down to us, in the language of the time of the Pyramids, are we everywhere confronted with this kindred spirit. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that there was a time when the forefathers of the Egyptians and of the rest of the North Africans enjoyed a community of speech with the Semites.

Such being the case, we are inclined to conclude that the North Africans belong to the so-called Caucasian race of men, and that they reached their later domicile in prehistoric times, after their detachment from the Semites.

If this assumption can claim for itself a high degree of probability, we have not advanced a very great deal toward the understanding of the historical development of Egypt. For these wanderings and migrations belong in any case to times remote—ay, very remote—from all historical evidence, and they provide us with no new disclosures from any direction as to the character and the development of the Egyptians. A further inference has been expressed that the immigrants into Egypt found it occupied by an indigenous population, which they subdued, and that from this population came the bondmen whom we find in ancient Egypt, while the immigrants went to make the lords and the aristocracy.

Possibly this assumption is just; in support of it we may cite the agreement subsisting between the nature of the Egyptian animal worship and the religious conceptions of several of the African peoples. But we must never lose sight of the fact that the Egyptians themselves have no knowledge of any such theory.

If an immigration and an amalgamation of peoples took place, at the time of the Pyramids it had already long been buried in oblivion; the Egyptians regard themselves as autocthonous, and—with the exception of a part of the population in the lower lands of Nubia, Libya, and Asia—as a single nation, within which there can be no question of a clash of mental conceptions, and within which the proud and the humble, the lord and the bondman, have nothing to distinguish them externally.

Historical presentation demands that we should treat the Egyptians throughout as one people, whatever may be the number of different tribes that settled in the Nile Valley in prehistoric time.b

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The earliest stage of man that is known in Egypt is the Palæolithic; this was contemporary with a rainy climate, which enabled at least some vegetation to grow on the high desert, for the great bulk of the worked flints are found five to fifteen hundred feet above the Nile, on a tableland which is now entirely barren desert. Water-worn palæoliths are found in the beds of the stream courses, now entirely dried up, and flaked flints of a rather later style occur in the deep beds of Nile gravels, which are twenty or thirty feet above the highest level of the present river. This type of work, however, lasted on to the age of the existing conditions, for perfectly sharp and fresh palæoliths are found on the desert as low down as the present high Nile.

PREHISTORIC EGYPT

The date of the change of climate is roughly shown by the depth of the Nile deposits. It is well known by a scale extending over about three thousand years, that in different parts of Egypt the rise of the Nile bed has been on an average about four inches per century, owing to the annual deposits of mud during the inundation. And in various borings that have been made, the depth of the Nile mud is only about twenty-five or thirty feet. Hence an age of about eight or nine thousand years for the cultivable land may be taken as a minimum, probably to be somewhat extended by slighter deposit in the earlier time.

The continuous history extends to about 5000 B.C., and the prehistoric age of continuous culture known to us covers probably two thousand years more; hence our continuous knowledge probably extends back to about 7000 B.C., or to about the time when the change of climate took place. At that time we find a race of European type starting on a continuous career, but with remains of a steatopygous race, of “Bushman” (Koranna) type known and represented in modelled figures. We can hardly avoid the conclusion that this steatopygous race was that of Palæolithic man in Egypt, especially as that equivalence is also known in the French cave remains. It is noticeable that all the figures known of this race—in France, Malta, and Egypt—are women, suggesting that the men were exterminated by the newer people, but the women were kept as slaves, and hence were familiar to the pioneers of the European race. These Palæolithic women were broadly built, with deep lumbar curve, great masses of fat on the hips and thighs, with hair along the lower jaw and over most of the body.

The fresh race which entered Egypt was of European type—slender, fair-skinned, with long, wavy brown hair. The skull was closely like that of the ancient and modern Algerians of the interior; and as one of the earliest classes of their pottery is similar in material and decoration to the present Kabyle pottery, we may consider them a branch of Algerians. They seem to have entered the country as soon as the Nile deposits rendered it habitable by an agricultural people. They already made well-formed pottery by hand, knew copper as a rarity, and were clad in goatskins. Entering a fertile country, and mixing probably with the earlier race, they made rapid advance in all their products, and in a few generations they had an able civilisation. Their work in flint was fine and bold, with more delicate handiwork than that of any other people except their descendants; their stone vases were cut in the hardest materials with exquisite regularity; their carving of ivory and slate was better than anything which followed for over a thousand years; and they had a large number of signs in use, which were probably the first stages of our alphabet.

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After some centuries of this culture a change appears, at the same point of time in every kind of work. A difference of people seems probable, but no great change of race, as the type is unaltered. The later people show some Eastern affinities; and it seems as if a part of the earlier Libyan people had entered Syria or North Arabia and had afterward flowed back through Egypt, modified by their Semitic contact. It is perhaps to this influx that the Semitic element in the Egyptian language is due.

This later prehistoric people brought in new kinds of pottery and more commerce, which provided gold, silver, and various foreign stones; they also elaborated the art of flint-working to its highest pitch of regularity and beauty, and they generally extended the use of copper, and developed the principal tools to full size. But they show even less artistic feeling than the earlier branch, for all figure-carving quickly decayed, both in ivory and in stone. The use of amulets was brought in, and also forehead pendants of shell. And the signs which were already in use almost entirely disappeared.

This prehistoric civilisation was much decayed when it was overcome by a new influx of people, who founded the dynastic rule. These came apparently from the Red Sea, as they entered Egypt in the reign of Coptos, and not either from the north or from the Upper Nile. They were a highly artistic people, as the earliest works attributable to them—the Min sculptures at Coptos—show better drawing than any work by the older inhabitants; and they rapidly advanced in art to the noble works of the Ist Dynasty. They also brought in the hieroglyphic system, which was developed along with their art. It seems probable that they came up from the Land of Punt, at the south of the Red Sea, and they may have been a branch of the Punic race in its migration from the Persian Gulf round by sea to the Mediterranean. They rapidly subdued the various tribes which were in Egypt, and at least five different types of man are shown on the monuments of their earliest kings.d Of these there were two distinct lines, the kings of Upper and the kings of Lower Egypt. The Palermo stone gives us the names of seven independent kings of Lower Egypt who ruled before the time of Menes—Seker, Tesau, Tau, Thesh, Neheb, Uat´-nar, and Mekha, while within the past few years the names of three pre-dynastic kings of Upper Egypt have been revealed—Te, Re, and Ka. To discover when and where these early monarchs reigned is probably the most interesting and important problem engaging the Egyptologist to-day.a

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CHAPTER II. THE OLD MEMPHIS KINGDOM

The First Dynasty
Thinites

	Manetho	Turin Papyrus	Abydos	Saqqarah	Monuments	Years in Manetho
						Afr.	Euseb.
1	Menes	Mena	Mena		Menes	62	60
2	Athothis	Atu	Teta		Teta	57	27
3	Kenkenes		Ateth			31	39
4	Uenephes	…a	Ata			23	42
5	Usaphaïdes	Hesep-ti	Hesep-ti		Hesep-ti	20	20
6	Miebidos	Mer-ba-pen	Mer-ba-pa	Mer-ba-pen		26	26
7	Semempses	Men-sa-nefer	Sem-en-Ptah		Sem-en-Ptah	18	18
8	Bieneches	…buhu	Kebh	Keb-hu		26	26
Total 253 (L. 263) 252 or 253 (L. 258)

The first human king who, according to Greek authors as well as according to the Egyptian lists of kings, ruled over the Nile Valley was Menes, called Mena in Egyptian. His family came from Teni, a spot in Middle Egypt, the Greek This [or Thinis] in Abydos, a place which formed a certain religious centre of the kingdom down to a late period. Menes himself, it is true, soon quitted the place and built his residence on another more favourably situated spot, the place where the fruitful plains of the Delta began. This new capital is Memphis, the city that flourished down to the latest periods of Egyptian history as a royal residence and a commercial centre. The foundation of the place is to-day exposed to the flooding of the Nile; this was already the case in ancient days, and the king was forced to protect the ground from this danger by a powerful dam. The dike which he constructed is in the neighbourhood of the place called Cocheiche. And this dike to this day secures the whole province of Gizeh from the floods.

This danger of flooding is less to be apprehended from the Nile itself than from the natural canal, called Bahr Yusuf [“River of Joseph”], which skirts the Libyan Desert. Thus the topographical conditions of this place have hardly varied at all from the time of Menes. The ruined site of ancient Memphis is now traced by only a few monuments, and the excavations here have been very unproductive, while even in the days of the Arabs the remnants of the town aroused the highest admiration in Arabian authors. At all events the name has remained, and to this day the great mound at Mitraheni is called Tel-el-Monf, the mound of Monf. The ancient Egyptian[91] name was Men-nefer, “the good place,” the sacred name Ha-kha-Ptah, “the house of the divine person of Ptah,” just as Ptah has remained for all time the chief god of the city. From this name, with but little right, it has been sought to derive the Greek name of the country of Egypt.

The acts, which for the rest are ascribed to Menes, are just those with which the first prince of a country is usually accredited. According to the Greeks he founded in Memphis the great temple of Ptah, the very first temple in Egypt; he regulated the service in the temple and the honouring of the god; he further was responsible for the introduction of the cult of Apis. Finally, he even discovered the alphabet, according to Anticlides, fifteen years (it would probably be more reasonable to read it 15,000) before Phoroneus, the architect of Argos.

Diodorus obliges us with the additional information that King Menes once was pursued by his own dogs, that he fled into Lake Mœris and was carried to the opposite shore on the back of a crocodile. In gratitude for, and in memory of, his marvellous deliverance he founded, so goes the tale, the town of Crocodilopolis, and introduced the veneration of crocodiles, to whom he surrendered the use of the lake. For himself he raised here a memorial pyramid and founded the famous Labyrinth. As for his character, according to the legend, he was a luxurious prince, who discovered the art of dressing a meal, and taught his subjects to eat in a reclining posture. In conflict with this is the account of Manetho, which depicts him as the first warrior-prince, and makes him fight the Libyans. According to Manetho he met his death through being swallowed by a hippopotamus. According to a widely spread but quite unauthentic story, he had in earlier life lost his only son Maneros, and the nation had composed a dirge on the subject entitled “Maneros,” of which text and melody are supposed to have survived for long.

Down to a late period Menes was honoured as a god in Egypt. In this capacity he appears on the Tablet of Abydos as the first of the kings; his statue is carried round in a procession in the Ramesseum, and even in the time of the Ptolemies, a priest of the statues of Nectanebo I, by the name of Un-nefer, was entrusted with his worship. His name lasted in Egypt even longer than his worship; it was borne by one of the most important Coptic saints, who lived at the beginning of the fourth century and to whom a church in old Cairo is yet dedicated.

Teta: Styled Athothis I by Eratosthenes, he is supposed to have ruled for fifty-nine years. According to Manetho, he constructed the royal castle of Memphis and wrote a work on anatomy, being particularly occupied with medicine. The latter supposition is rendered more complete to a certain extent by the account, due to the Ebers papyrus, that a method for making the hair grow described accurately therein, was supposed to have been discovered by our king’s mother, Shesh. For the rest we have no information of his period, except that in the reign of the son of Menes a double-headed crane revealed itself; this was supposed to be a sign of long prosperity for Egypt. We may possibly explain this legend from the circumstance that the names of the two successors of Menes are formed with the names of the crane-headed or ibis-headed god, Tehuti.

Ata: A great plague broke out in his reign.

Hesep-ti: [Within the past few years the correct reading of this name has been shown to be Sem-ti. His Horus name is Ten.]

Sem-en-ptah: [This name is also read Semsu.] According to Manetho there was a great pestilence in this reign.

[92]

The Second Dynasty
Thinites

	Manetho	Turin Papyrus	Abydos	Saqqarah	Monuments	Years in Manetho
						Afr.	Euseb.
1	Boethos	…ba-u	Be-t´a-u	Neter-ba-u		38
2	Chaiechos	…ka-u	Ka-ka-u	Ka-ka-u		29	29
3	Binothris	…neter-en	Ba-neter-en	Ba-neter-en		47	47
4	Tlas		Uat´nes	Uat´nes		17
5	Sethenes	Senta	Senta	Sent	Sent	41
6	Chaires	…ka			Per-ab-sen?	17
7	Nefercheres			Nefer-ka-Ra		25
8	Sesochris					48
9	Cheneres					30
Total 302

[There is a king whose Horus name is read Hotep-Sekhemui, and who is placed by some authorities early in the IInd Dynasty, but as yet we do not even know his name as king of United Egypt.] Ka-ka-u. [Under this king the worship of the Apis bulls was instituted.] Baneter-en. This is the Biophis of Eusebius. Of high importance for the whole of Egyptian history is the observation of Manetho that this king declared female succession to be legitimate. In the course of the history of Egypt we shall indeed frequently have occasion to note what immense weight this people attached to female succession, and how it is this which in innumerable instances gives the colour of legitimacy to the assumption of the throne by a sovereign or a dynasty. John of Antioch makes the Nile flow with honey for eleven days in the reign of Binothris, while Manetho postpones this miracle until the reign of Nefercheres.d

The Third Dynasty
Memphites

	Manetho	Turin Papyrus	Abydos	Saqqarah	Monuments	Years in Manetho
						Afr.	Euseb.
1	Necherophes	Seker-nefer-ka		Seker-nefer-ka		28
2	Tosorthros	…t´efa		T´efa		29
3	Tyreïs	T´at´ai	T´at´ai	Bebi		7
4	Mesochris	Neb-ka	Neb-ka		Neb-ka-Ra	17
5	Soüphis	T´er	T´er-sa	T´er	T´er	16
6	Tosertasis	T´er-teta	Teta	T´er-teta		19
7	Aches					42
8	Sephuris		Set´es	Ra-neb-ka?		30
9	Cherpheres	Huni	Ra-nefer-ka	Huni	Huni	26
Note.—T´ is to be pronounced tch or z.				Total 214

Unfortunately we cannot as yet positively identify Necherophes on the tablets and monuments. A new arrangement, and one that has much in its[93] favour, is to connect him with Neb-ka or Neb-ka-Ra (No. 4, in Wiedemann’s table). This would join Seker-nefer-ka with Sesochris (No. 8, IInd Dynasty) with the additional support that “ochris” is plainly the Greek equivalent of “Seker”; and T´efa with Cheneres, although the latter assumption is admittedly the merest guesswork. This brings T´er-sa (or Zeser, as it is more often spelled) opposite Tosorthros. We know that Zeser built the step-pyramid of Saqqarah and Manetho says that Tosorthros “built a house of hewn stones.” He is the most important sovereign of the dynasty. Manetho further credits him with bringing the art of writing to perfection; he is also supposed to have been a physician, and for this reason the divine Æsculapius of the Greeks. From Tosertasis to the end of the dynasty there are differences of opinion in regard to order or identification, and consequently we are still at sea with regard to Tyreïs, Mesochris, and Soüphis.

THE PYRAMID DYNASTY

The IVth Dynasty has a peculiar and unique interest for the casual observer of Egyptian history, because it was the time when the world-famous pyramids were erected, the pyramids which were accounted among the wonders of the world in classical antiquity, and the name of which has stood almost as a synonym of Egypt for all succeeding generations. If one were to list the wonders of the world in our day, the legitimate number would swell far beyond the classical estimate of seven; but it may be doubted if among them all there would be any more justly accounted wonderful than these same pyramids. Even if constructed to-day, they would be accounted marvellous structures; and, dating as they do from remotest antiquity, when the devices of the modern mechanic were yet undreamed of, they seem almost miraculous. Nothing that any other land can show at all rivals or duplicates them; they are unique, like Egypt herself.

What adds to the unique interest of the pyramids is the fact that we know almost nothing of their builders, except what these structures themselves relate. The pyramids epitomise the history of an epoch. They are the standing witness that Egypt in that epoch was inhabited by a highly civilised people. But practically all that we know of this people is that they were the builders of the pyramids. Even that is much, however, and we shall advantageously dwell at length upon these monuments, viewing them from as many standpoints as possible—through the eyes of Diodorus on the one hand, and of the most recent European explorers on the other.a

Diodorus, voicing the traditions of his time, gives the following entertaining account of these marvels:[2]

[94]

“Chemmis [Khufu or Cheops], the Eighth King from Remphis, was of Memphis, and reign’d Fifty Years. He built the greatest of the Three Pyramids, which were accounted amongst the Seven Wonders of the World. They stand towards Lybia a Hundred and Twenty Furlongs from Memphis, and Five and Forty from Nile. The Greatness of these Works, and the excessive Labour of the Workmen seen in them, do even strike the Beholders with Admiration and Astonishment. The greatest being Four-square, took up on every Square Seven Hundred Foot of Ground in the Basis, and above Six Hundred Foot in height, spiring up narrower by little and little, till it come up to the Point, the Top of which was Six Cubits Square. It’s built of solid Marble throughout, of rough Work, but of perpetual Duration: For though it be now a Thousand Years since it was built (some say above Three Thousand and Four Hundred) yet the Stones are as firmly joynted, and the whole Building as intire and without the least decay, as they were at the first laying and Erection. The Stone, they say, was brought a long way off, out of Arabia, and that the Work was rais’d by making Mounts of Earth; Cranes and other Engines being not known at that time. And that which is most to be admir’d at, is to see such a Foundation so imprudently laid, as it seems to be, in a Sandy Place, where there’s not the least Sign of any Earth cast up, nor Marks where any Stone was cut and polish’d; so that the whole Pile seems to be rear’d all at once, and fixt in the midst of Heaps of Sand by some God, and not built by degrees by the Hands of Men. Some of the Egyptians tell wonderful things, and invent strange Fables concerning these Works, affirming that the Mounts were made of Salt and Salt-Peter, and that they were melted by the Inundation of the River, and being so dissolv’d, everything was washt away but the Building itself. But this is not the Truth of the thing; but the great Multitude of Hands that rais’d the Mounts, the same carry’d back the Earth to the Place whence they dug it, for they say there were Three Hundred and Sixty Thousand Men imploy’d in this Work, and the Whole was scarce compleated in Twenty Years time.

“When this King was dead, his Brother Cephres [Khaf-Ra] succeeded him, and reign’d Six and Fifty Years: Some say it was not his Brother, but his Son Chabryis that came to the Crown: But all agree in this, that the Successor, in imitation of his Predecessor, erected another Pyramid like to the former, both in Structure and Artificial Workmanship, but not near so large, every square of the Basis being only a Furlong in Breadth.

“Upon the greater Pyramid was inscrib’d the value of the Herbs and Onions that were spent upon the Labourers during the Works, which amounted to above Sixteen Hundred Talents.

“There’s nothing writ upon the lesser: The Entrance and Ascent is only on one side, cut by steps into the main Stone. Although the Kings design’d these Two for their Sepulchers, yet it hapen’d that neither of them were there buri’d. For the People, being incens’d at them by reason of the Toyl and Labour they were put to, and the cruelty and oppression of their Kings, threatened to drag their Carkasses out of their Graves, and pull them by piece-meal, and cast them to the Dogs; and therefore both of them upon their Beds commanded their Servants to bury them in some obscure place.

“After him reign’d Mycerinus [Mencheres] (otherwise call’d Cherinus) the Son of him who built the first Pyramid. This Prince began a Third, but died before it was finish’d; every square of the Basis was Three Hundred Foot. The Walls for fifteen Stories high were Black Marble like that of Thebes, the rest was of the same Stone with the other Pyramids. Though[95] the other Pyramids went beyond this in greatness, yet this far excell’d the rest in the Curiosity of the Structure and the largeness of the Stones. On that side of the Pyramid towards the North, was inscrib’d the Name of the Founder Mecerinus. This King, they say, detesting the severity of the former Kings, carried himself all his Days gently and graciously towards all his Subjects, and did all that possibly he could to gain their Love and Good Will towards him; besides other things, he expended vast Sums of Money upon the Oracles and Worship of the Gods; and bestowing large Gifts upon honest Men whom he judg’d to be injur’d, and to be hardly dealt with in the Courts of Justice.

“There are other Pyramids, every Square of which are Two Hundred Foot in the Basis; and in all things like unto the other, except in bigness. It’s said that these Three last Kings built them for their Wives.

“It is not in the least doubted, but that these Pyramids far excel all the other Works throughout all Egypt, not only in the Greatness and Costs of the Building, but in the Excellency of the Workmanship: For the Architects (they say) are much more to be admir’d than the Kings themselves that were at the Cost. For those perform’d all by their own Ingenuity, but these did nothing but by the Wealth handed to them by descent from their Predecessors, and by the Toyl and Labour of other Men.”e

A MODERN ACCOUNT OF THE PYRAMIDS

The Egyptians of the Theban period were compelled to form their opinions of the Pharaohs of the Memphite dynasties in the same way as we do, less by the positive evidence of their acts than by the size and number of their monuments: they measured the magnificence of Cheops [Khufu] by the dimensions of his pyramid, and all nations having followed this example, Cheops has continued to be one of the three or four names of former times which sound familiar to our ears. The hills of Gizeh in his time terminated in a bare, wind-swept tableland. A few solitary mastabas were scattered here and there on its surface, similar to those whose ruins still crown the hill of Dahshur.

The Sphinx, buried even in ancient times to its shoulders, raised its head halfway down the eastern slope, at its southern angle; beside him the temple of Osiris, lord of the Necropolis, was fast disappearing under the sand; and still farther back, old abandoned tombs honeycombed the rock.

Cheops [Khufu] chose a site for his pyramid on the northern edge of the plateau, whence a view of the city of the White Wall, at the same time of the holy city of Heliopolis, could be obtained. A small mound which commanded this prospect was roughly squared, and incorporated into the masonry; the rest of the site was levelled to receive the first course of stones.

The pyramid when completed had a height of 476 feet on a base 764 feet square; but the decaying influence of time has reduced these dimensions to 450 and 730 feet respectively. It possessed, up to the Arab conquest, its polished facing, coloured by age, and so subtly jointed that one would have said that it was a single slab from top to bottom. The work of facing the pyramid began at the top; that of the point was first placed in position, then the courses were successively covered until the bottom was reached.

In the interior every device had been employed to conceal the exact position of the sarcophagus, and to discourage the excavators whom chance or persistent search might have put upon the right track. Their first difficulty would be to discover the entrance under the limestone casing. It lay hidden[96] almost in the middle of the northern face, on the level of the eighteenth course, at about forty-five feet above the ground. A movable flagstone, working on a stone pivot, disguised it so effectively that no one except the priests and custodians could have distinguished this stone from its neighbours. When it was tilted up, a yawning passage was revealed, three and a half feet in height, with a breadth of four feet. The passage is an inclined plane, extending partly through the masonry and partly through the solid rock for a distance of 318 feet; it passes through an unfinished chamber and ends in cul-de-sac 59 feet farther on.

The Great Pyramid was called Khut, “the Horizon,” in which Khufu had to be swallowed up, as his father, the Sun, was engulfed every evening in the horizon of the west. It contained only the chambers of the deceased, without a word of inscription, and we should not know to whom it belonged, if the masons, during its construction, had not daubed here and there in red paint among their private marks the name of the king and the date of his reign. Worship was rendered to this Pharaoh in a temple constructed a little in front of the eastern side of the pyramid, but of which nothing remains but a mass of ruins.

Pharaoh had no need to wait until he was mummified before he became a god; religious rites in his honour were established on his ascension; and many of the individuals who made up his court attached themselves to his double long before his double had become disembodied. They served him faithfully during their life, to repose finally in his shadow in the little pyramids and mastabas which clustered around him. Of Dadef-Ra (or Tatf-Ra), his immediate successor, we can probably say that he reigned eight years.

[This is according to the Abydos and Saqqarah lists, but his chronological position is still uncertain. The inscription of Mertitefs, one of Sneferu’s queens, mentions that she was later a favourite of Khufu, and even in her old age, of Khaf-Ra. This, if true, would leave no space for Dadef-Ra between these reigns, so he was either a co-regent or successor. In the XXVIth Dynasty his priests give, in several instances, the succession as Khufu, Khaf-Ra, Dadef-Ra. Professor Petrie identifies him with the Rhatoises of Manetho, and so makes him the third successor of Khufu, but Professor Maspero, in his reading “Dadef-Ra,” distinctly dissents from any such recognition. It is possible that this king is the same person as the Prince Hortotef, son of Khufu, who, as the hero of a famous tale, is one of the best-known characters of early Egyptian literature.]

But Khaf-Ra (or Khephren), the next son, who succeeded to the throne, erected temples and a gigantic pyramid, like his father. He placed it some 394 feet to the southwest of that of Cheops (Khufu); and called it Ur, “the Great.” It is, however, smaller than its neighbour, and attains a height of only 443 feet, but at a distance the difference in height disappears, and many travellers have thus been led to attribute the same elevation to the two.

The internal arrangements of the pyramid are of the simplest character; they consist of a granite-built passage carefully concealed in the north face, running at first at an angle of 25°, and then horizontally, until stopped by a granite barrier at a point which indicates a change of direction; a second passage, which begins on the outside, at a distance of some yards in advance of the base of the pyramid, and proceeds, after passing through an unfinished chamber, to rejoin the first; finally, a chamber hollowed in the rock, but surmounted by a pointed roof of fine limestone slabs. The sarcophagus was of granite, and, like that of Khufu, bore neither the name of a king nor the representation of a god.

[97]

Of Khaf-Ra’s sons, Men-kau-Ra (the Mycerinus of the Greeks), who was his successor, could scarcely dream of excelling his father and grandfather; his pyramid, “the Supreme” (Her), barely attained an elevation of 216 feet, and was exceeded in height by those which were built at a later date. Up to one-fourth of its height it was faced with syenite, and the remainder, up to the summit, with limestone. For lack of time, doubtless, the dressing of the granite was not completed, but the limestone received all the polish it was capable of taking. The enclosing wall was extended to the north so as to meet, and be of one width with, that of the Second Pyramid. The temple was connected with the plain by a long and almost straight causeway, which ran for the greater part of its course upon an embankment raised above the neighbouring ground.

The arrangement of the interior of the pyramid is somewhat complicated, and bears witness to changes brought about unexpectedly in the course of construction. The original central mass probably did not exceed 180 feet in breadth at the base, with a vertical height of 154 feet. It contained a sloping passage cut into the hill itself, and an oblong low-roofed cell devoid of ornament. The main bulk of the work had been already completed, and the casing not yet begun, when it was decided to modify the proportions of the whole. Men-kau-Ra was not, it appears, the eldest son and appointed heir of Khaf-Ra; while still a mere prince he was preparing for himself a pyramid similar to those which lie near “the Horizon,” when the deaths of his father and brother called him to the throne.

What was sufficient for him as a child, was no longer suitable for him as a Pharaoh; the mass of the structure was increased to its present dimensions, and a new inclined passage was effected in it, at the end of which a hall panelled with granite gave access to a kind of antechamber. The latter communicated by a horizontal corridor with the first vault, which was deepened for the occasion; the old entrance, now no longer of use, was roughly filled up.

Men-kau-Ra did not find his last resting-place in this upper level of the interior of the pyramid: a narrow passage, hidden behind the slabbing of the second chamber, descended into a secret crypt, lined with granite and covered with a barrel-vaulted roof. The sarcophagus was a single block of blue-black basalt, polished, and carved into the form of a house, with a façade having three doors and three openings in the form of windows, the whole framed in a rounded moulding and surmounted by a projecting cornice such as we are accustomed to see on the temples. The mummy-case of cedar-wood had a man’s head, and was shaped to the form of the human body; it was neither painted nor gilt, but an inscription in two columns, cut on its front, contained the name of the Pharaoh, and a prayer on his behalf.

The example given by Khufu, Khaf-Ra, and Men-kau-Ra was by no means lost in later times. From the beginning of the IVth to the end of the XIVth Dynasty—during more than fifteen hundred years—the construction of pyramids was a common state affair, provided for by the administration.

Not only did the Pharaohs build them for themselves, but the princes and princesses belonging to the family of the Pharaohs constructed theirs, each one according to his resources; three of these secondary mausoleums are ranged opposite the eastern side of “the Horizon,” three opposite the southern face of “the Supreme,” and everywhere else—near Abusir, at Saqqarah, at Dahshur, or in the Fayum—the majority of the royal pyramids attracted around them a more or less numerous cortège of pyramids of princely foundation often debased in shape and faulty in proportion.f

[98]

THE BUILDERS OF THE PYRAMIDS

Sneferu is the first ruler of Egypt of whose deeds we know something. A relief with an inscription in Wady Magharah on the peninsula of Sinai represents him as slaying the robber-like tribes of the desert, the Mentu, with a club. According to the inscriptions of the XIIth Dynasty in Sarbut-el-Hadim, it appears that he was considered as founder of the Egyptian dominion in the peninsula of Sinai. His memory was honoured for many years; his worship was often mentioned, and in literary works his bountiful reign was also called to mind. He was probably buried in the Great Pyramid, which has the appearance of terraces, at Medum, the opening of which was begun a short while ago. In one of the neighbouring tombs a statue was found of its architect, Henka, and probably the remaining tombs at Medum belong to this epoch.

Sneferu’s successor Khufu, the Cheops of Herodotus, was the builder of the largest pyramid. The construction of temples was also attributed to him (the temple of the “Lady of the Pyramids,” Isis, in Gizeh, and the planning of the temple of Denderah), and the town of Menat Khufu bears his name. He also fought in the peninsula of Sinai. In front of the immense sepulchre of the king, his wives or other relatives are buried in three small pyramids, and around them in mastabas the nobles of his court. What the Greeks relate concerning the oppression of Egypt by Khufu and Khaf-Ra and of their ungodliness, whilst Men-kau-Ra as the builder of the small Pyramid is looked on as a righteous and just ruler, are their own words which they place in the mouth of the Egyptians; such a conception is remote from the truth, and the picture which we gain from the tombs of the period is throughout bright and cheerful. Certainly every contemporary was proud of having taken part in this giant construction.

After the short reign of Tatf-Ra followed Khaf-Ra, the builder of the second pyramid of Gizeh, to which time probably dates back the enigmatically immense construction of granite and alabaster to the south of the Great Sphinx; the fragments of nine statues of the king were found in it. His next followers were Men-kau-Ra, the Mycerinus of Herodotus, the builder of the third pyramid at Gizeh, and Shepses-ka-f, of whom we learn something definite through the biography of Ptah-Shepses, buried in Saqqarah. He had formerly been brought up at the court of Men-kau-Ra with the children of the king; he grew up under Shepses-ka-f, who gave him his eldest daughter to wife, loaded him with honours, and appointed him as secretary to all constructions which he planned to build.

The circumstance, that there is no mention of warlike expeditions either in this biography or in other monuments of this epoch, but that peaceful undertakings, journeys, and festivals, and above all, the constructions of the king, are continually quoted, is an important sign of the character of the times.

Manetho now makes three kings follow for thirty-eight years, who are nowhere mentioned in the inscriptions, and then begins a new dynasty (the Vth), with Usercheres, which sprang from Elephantine. But in the monuments it is stated that Shepses-ka-f was immediately followed by Uskaf (or User-ka-f) [Usercheres]. At the most, only short interregnums can have intervened, and Prince Sechem-ka-Ra lived under five kings, Khaf-Ra, Men-kau-Ra, Shepses-ka-f, Uskaf, and Sahu-Ra, whose reigns occupied about a century. It is very probable that a new family came to the throne either in a peaceful or violent manner; in the Turin papyrus the portion which probably contained Uskaf’s reign has completely fallen out.

[99]

We learn very little of Uskaf or Usercheres. His successor Sahu-Ra, on the contrary, is one of the most renowned rulers of the time. He also fought in Wady Magharah. The next kings cannot be placed in their order with certainty. The Turin papyrus allows eight reigns, mostly short, to follow, and at the fifth introduces a gap; the lists of Abydos and Saqqarah have only given us three names. Only Nefer-ar-ka-Ra and especially An, the first king who gave himself a title (User-en-Ra), were at all important. Then followed Men-kau-hor (reign of eight years), Assa, with the name of Tat-ka-Ra (twenty-eight years), and Unas (thirty years), of whom the first and second, like An, left monuments commemorative of their victories on the peninsula of Sinai.

The first epoch of Egyptian history closes with the reign of Unas. Almost three hundred years had passed since Sneferu had built up his pyramid and celebrated his victory in Wady Magharah. Throughout the whole period Memphis was the central point of the kingdom, and its necropolis almost the only source of our instruction. After the death of Unas—it is not known whether he died in peace or was overthrown by a revolution—a new race ascended the throne and the centre of Egyptian life begins gradually to shift itself. The Turin papyrus rightly makes the first principal division here, and gives the sum of all the reigns from Menes to Unas; but the figures are unfortunately lost to us.

Here follows a table of kings in which the lists of Manetho for the IIIrd, IVth, and Vth Dynasties are compared with the lists of the Turin papyrus, the Abydos tablet, the Saqqarah tablet, and the wall list of Karnak.b It will be recalled that these lists, taken together, furnish us with the chief information at present accessible as to the true sequence of the early Egyptian rulers. Notwithstanding its somewhat forbidding appearance at first glance, this tablet will repay careful study. It illustrates the way in which the different lists must be pieced together in an attempt to form a complete record. It shows, also, how widely the Hellenised names of Manetho’s list differ from the Egyptian originals; suggesting the extent to which surmise must sometimes enter into identification. Indeed, it would be hard to tell which were the greater misfortune: the disappearance of Manetho’s history, or the accident by which the Turin papyrus was broken into scores of little pieces only to be restored in an unscientific and almost worthless condition by Seyffarth.a

[100]

Turin Papyrus [P.], Abydos Tablet [A.], Saqqarah Tablet [S.] Karnak [K.]					Manetho
1.		Zeser, P. A. S.			Dyn. III—	2	Tosorthros	29 years
		Gap in dynasty	19 years			6	Tosertasis	19 years
2.		Zeser Teta, P. A. S.	6 years
3.		Set´es, A.; Neb-ka-Ra, S.	6 years
4.		Nefer-ka-Ra, A.; Huni, S.	24 years
5.		Sneferu, A. S. K.	24 years		Dyn. IV—	1	Soris	29 years
6.		Khufu, A. S.	23 years			2	Suphis	63 years
7.		Tatf-Ra, A. S.	8 years
8.		Khaf-Ra, A. S.	? years			3	Suphis	66 years
9.		Men-kau-Ra, A. S.	? years			4	Mencheres	63 years
10.		Shepses-ka-f, A. S.	? years			5	Rhatoises	25 years
						6	Bicheris	22 years
						7	Sebercheres	7 years
						8	Tamphthis	9 years
11.		[Us-ka-f, A. S.]	[missing]		Dyn. V—	1	Usercheres	28 years
12.		[A. S. K.] Sahu-Ra	18-38 years			2	Sephres	13 years
		Here belong:
13.	{	Kakaa, A.; and Monum.	4 years
14.	{	Nefer-Ra, A.	2 years
15.	{	Nefer-ar-ka-Ra, S.; and Monum.	7 years			3	Nephercheres	20 years
16.	{	Shepses-ka-Ra, S.	12 years			4	Sisires	7 years
17.	{	Nefer-kha-Ra, S.	? years	}		5	Cheres	20 years
	{		Gap in Dynasty	}
18.	{	Akau-hor, Monum.	7 years	}
19.	{	and perhaps Ahtes	? years	}
20.		[User-en-Ra, An. A. K.]	10-30 years	}		6	Rhathures	44 years
21.		Men-kau-hor, P. A. S.	8 years			7	Mencheres	9 years
22.		Tat-ka-Ra, Assa., P. A. S. K.	28 years			8	Tancheres	44 years
23.		Unas, P. A. S.	30 years			9	Onnos	33 years
Total of seventeen reigns,			236-276 years
To these must be added six reigns; the duration of which is unknown.					Totals give 277 years for Dyn. IV, 248 for Dyn. V, differing from the sums of the single reigns.

If we allow fifteen years for each of the six missing reigns, we get for the period from Zeser to Unas about 350 years. For the something like nineteen kings of the Turin Papyrus from Menes to Zeser (exclusive) there falls, then, about 350 years, from Menes to Sneferu (exclusive) therefore, about 350, from Sneferu to Unas about 300, which agrees very well with the indications on the monuments. (According to the most reliable of the reported figures of Manetho the first three dynasties lasted 769 years, the IVth and Vth 525 years.)b

Very recent discoveries have thrown a certain amount of light on the obscurities of the Vth Dynasty, particularly with reference to the kings Nos. 13-19 bracketed in the above table. The latest research has developed:

(1) That Kakaa (No. 13) must be only another, and probably personal, name of either Nefer-ar-ka-Ra or Shepses-ka-Ra, probably of the former.

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(2) That the Akau-hor of a few monuments is probably the personal name of Nefer-kha-Ra (Saqqarah tablet); now read Nefer-f-Ra.

We may also now reject the Nefer-Ra (No. 14) and the Ahtes (No. 19) and consider the Vth Dynasty, beginning with Uskaf and ending with Unas to consist of nine kings, and to have lasted about two hundred and twenty years.

Various monuments have come down to us from the Vth Dynasty, including inscriptions on steles and tablets, an alabaster vase, a polished ink slab and scarabs. Among the most interesting remains of the period is a papyrus roll found in 1893 at Saqqarah near the Step Pyramid. This papyrus contains an account of the reign of King Tat-ka-Ra or Assa, and it is believed to be the oldest fragment of manuscript in existence. A much more famous papyrus roll, the so-called Prisse Papyrus—sometimes called the oldest book in the world—now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, is believed to be a copy of an original written in the time of Assa. The Prisse Papyrus itself dates from the XIIth Dynasty. It was written by one Ptah-hotep, spoken of in the book itself as “Son of the King, of his body,” which phrase may mean that the author was actually the son of the king (Brugsch) or, that he was really a relative of the monarch, perhaps his uncle (Petrie). The document itself has a peculiar interest aside from its age. It is the philosophical moralising of an old man who, plaintively lamenting the infirmities of age, casts a regretful glance on by-gone times; yet whose view on the whole is wise and optimistic. “It does the heart good and rejoices the mind,” says Brugsch, “to follow that old harangue which preserves the intimate thought of the age of the prince, embracing the whole course of human existence in simple, childish words. Here is a noble lesson on the true greatness of man, for throughout he breathes a spirit of human purity which finds the only true greatness in a modest mind.”

Professor Mahaffy, speaking in a somewhat similar vein, calls attention to the fact that the morals, the aspirations, and the unsolved social problems of the remote time in which Ptah-hotep wrote bear a singular resemblance to those of to-day, pointing the moral that humanity has not greatly changed in essentials during the intervening five or six thousand years.

After the Vth Dynasty, which was regarded by the author of the Turin Papyrus as closing an epoch, there is a period of five hundred years or more during which relatively little is known of Egyptian history. According to the lists of Manetho, this period saw the rise and fall of various dynasties which, vaguely as they are known, have passed into traditional history as Dynasties VI to X. The Turin Papyrus and the lists of Abydos, Saqqarah, and Karnak supply us with various names, mostly unsuggestive of the names of Manetho. There are, however, two or three exceptions to this, notably the king named third in Manetho’s VIth Dynasty, Philos, who is believed to represent the monarch named on all the other lists as Meri-Ra, or, as he is more generally known, Pepi, the latter being his family name. This monarch, who probably lived about 3200 B.C., was the Ramses II of his epoch. He has left us more monuments than any other ruler before the XIIth Dynasty. These include a pyramid at Saqqarah, rock inscriptions in steles at Elephantine and elsewhere, statuettes, canopic jars, cylinders, and scarabs. The most notable of all the monuments ascribed to him is the Red Sphinx of Tanis, now in the Louvre in Paris, which, if really his,—the matter is still not quite decided among the best authorities,—is the oldest sphinx known. If authentic, the face of this sphinx probably furnishes[102] a representation of Pepi which is doubtless the most ancient portrait in existence.

A great builder and monument-maker, he was a great conqueror as well, waging successful wars against the Aamu and Herusha, who inhabited the desert east of the Delta. He even extended his conquests against “the land of the Terehbah,” which, it has been surmised, may be Syria; or which may possibly have been even farther to the north: the similarity of names suggests that the people referred to may have been the Tibareni, one of the smaller peoples of Asia Minor. In any event, the warlike expedition against this unknown people was made in ships.

The most interesting thing about King Pepi remains to be told. This is the manner in which records of his deeds have come down to us. The various monuments left by the king himself contain scant reference to his accomplishments. The inscription that enables us to gain glimpses of the life of the greatest monarch of his epoch is not the inscription of the monarch himself, but of one of his servants. This officer of the king bore the name of Una. He was of unknown origin, and there is no reason to suppose that he was of royal blood; but he attained to the highest distinction. He had come to be, according to the inscription over his tomb, “Crown bearer of the Majesty (of the King), Superintendent of the storehouse, and Registrar (Sacred Scribe) of the docks” for King Teta, the predecessor of King Pepi.

On the death of his master, Una appears to have passed into the service of the next incumbent, Pepi, as “Chief of the coffer of the Majesty (of the King) with the rank of Companion, Scribe, Priest of the place of his pyramid.” “His Majesty was satisfied with me (beyond all) his servants,” declares Una. “(He gave me also) to hear all things. I was alone with the Royal Scribe, and officer of all the secrets. The King was satisfied with me more than any of his chiefs, of his family, of his servants.”

The inscription then goes on to detail the services rendered by Una to Pepi, and his son Mer-en-Ra as well. He fully earned all of his titles and honours. He would seem to have been in charge, not merely of household affairs, building operations, the moving of monuments and the like, but to have been commander-in-chief of the armies, and the efficient agent of Pepi in his conquests at home and abroad, as he says: “ He sent me five times, to subdue the land of Herusha to subdue their revolt by this force. His Majesty was pleased at it beyond everything Saying, have revolted the Negroes of this tribe of the land of Khetam, safely to Takhisa; I sailed again in boats with this force. I subdued this country from the extreme frontier on the North of the land of Herusha. Then was ordered this army on the road. They subdued them also smiting all opponents there. The place was thrown under my sandals. The King of Upper and Lower Egypt Mer-en-Ra the Divine Lord the ever living gave me to be a Duke, Governor of the South ascending from Abu to the North of the nome Letopolis. I very much pleased His Majesty, I greatly pleased His Majesty to the Satisfaction of His Majesty.”

One of the most interesting passages in the inscription of Una is that in which he gives details of the transportation of the pyramid Kha-nefer of Mer-en-Ra, making for it “a boat of burthen in the little dock 60 cubits in length and thirty in its breadth, put together in 17 days in the month of Epiphi.” There was not water enough in the river to tow the pyramid safely, but the inscription continues: “It was done by me forthwith before the god (King). His Majesty the Divine Lord ordered and sent me to excavate four docks in the South for three boats of burthen, four transports in the[103] small basin of the land of Uauat. Then the rulers of the countries of Araret, Aam, and Ma, supplied the wood for them. It was made in about a year at the time of the inundation loaded with very much granite for the Kha-nefer pyramid of Mer-en-Ra.” (Birch’sg translation.)

Aside from its intrinsic interest, this inscription of Una has a peculiar historical importance as illustrating a phase of life in Egypt that we shall not see duplicated among the Semitic nations of Asia; the fact, namely, that a mere subject of the king could leave a permanent record of his deeds. In Babylonia and Assyria it is the monarch always who speaks from the inscriptions; the name of a subject is never mentioned. It is not so very often, even in Egypt, that the name of a subject is heard, but the fact that this sometimes occurs marks a distinct difference between the character of the Egyptian and Asiatic civilisations.

One other monarch of the VIth Dynasty has gained traditional fame; this time through the pages of Herodotus. This is the Queen Nitocris. Herodotus, to be sure, gives us no clew as to the age when this female monarch ruled, but the name appears in the lists of Manetho. Herodotus was attracted by the picturesque story told him in reference to Nitocris by the Egyptian priests. He asserts that of the names of three hundred and thirty sovereigns, successors of Menes, recited to him from a book by the Egyptian priests, only one was a female native of the country. He continues: “The female was called Nitocris, which was also the name of the Babylonian princess. They affirm that the Egyptians having slain her brother, who was their sovereign, she was appointed his successor; and that afterwards, to avenge his death, she destroyed by artifice a great number of Egyptians. By her orders a large subterraneous apartment was constructed professedly for festivals, but in reality for a different purpose. She invited to this place a great number of those Egyptians whom she knew to be the principal instruments of her brother’s death, and then by a private canal introduced the river amongst them. They added, that to avoid the indignation of the people, she suffocated herself in an apartment filled with ashes.” (Herodotus, II, 99.)

The Turin papyrus gives the name of Nit-aqert as one of the Pharaohs of the VIth Dynasty, so it would appear that Herodotus was writing of an actual personage, whether or not the story that he tells was well founded. Manetho says of Nitocris that she governed twelve years, “the noblest and most beautiful woman of that period, fair, and at the same time the builder of the Third Pyramid.” Brugsch, commenting upon this, says: “It is difficult to discover the historical foundation for the tale of Herodotus, and we would only say that it must indicate that about the time of Queen Nitocris, internecine murders and dissensions began in the kingdom, awakened by the poisonous envy of the pretenders to the throne.” As to Maneth[104]o’s assertion that Nitocris built the Third Pyramid, it has been explained by Perring that the Third Pyramid was transformed and enlarged at a later date. It is suggested that “Queen Nitocris took possession of Men-kau-Ra’s tomb, left the king’s sarcophagus in a lower vault, and placed her own in the chamber in front. If we are to be guided by the ruined fragments of bluish basalt which lie on the spot, she had the surface of the monument faced with that costly decoration of highly polished granite, which afterward served inventive Greek story-tellers with a foundation for the tale of Rhodopis, the hetaira, who reduced her friends to beggary that she might obtain vast sums of money for the building of the pyramid.”

THE BEAUTIFUL NITOCRIS

Various romances have become associated with traditions in reference to Nitocris. She was credited with supernatural witchery, and it was said that after her death her naked spirit haunted the pyramid she was alleged to have built, and that by the magic of her mere smile she drove her lovers mad. The story of her revenge upon the men who, in a riot, had killed her brother the king, is given by Herodotus as above. The brother she avenged was Menthesouphis, whom Meyer places at some distance from her in the line. Round this same Nitocris gathered other legends, among them the original of our Cinderella story. According to this version, Nitocris was originally a courtesan named Rhodopis (“Rosy-cheeked”—a translation into Greek of the name Nitocris). Once when she was bathing in the river, an eagle stole one of her little gilded sandals, and flying away let it fall into the lap of the king, who was holding a court of justice in the open air. He was so taken with the beauty of the tiny shoe that he had a search made for the woman whom it fitted, and made her his queen.

Beyond the historical narratives of Una, and the traditions about Nitocris, only shreds of knowledge are forthcoming regarding the monarchs of the long epoch with which we are dealing. The epoch as a whole is well characterised in the words of Brugsch:a

A profound darkness falls over Egyptian history after the time of Ne-fer-ka-Ra, shrouding even the faintest traces of the existence of kings whose empty names the tablets of Abydos and Saqqarah have preserved to us, names without deeds, sounds without meaning, like the inscriptions on the tombs of unknown, obscure men. Unless we are deceived, we may here picture a state split up into petty kingdoms and scourged by civil war and regicide, from whose haq or princes no saviour arose to strike down the refractory with the strong arm, grasp with a firm hand the loosened rein, and once more establish a central government.h

In a few words may be added certain more or less inchoate details as to the few monarchs of the VIth to Xth Dynasties upon whose history the most recent research has thrown some rays of light.

As for the VIth Dynasty, the most modern attempts at disentanglement place a Mer-en-Ra II and a Neter-ka-Ra after Nefer-ka-Ra; Mer-en-Ra II to correspond with the Menthesuphis of Manetho as distinct from the Methusuphis [Mer-en-Ra I] of the same historian. The Neter-ka-Ra occurs only on the Abydos Tablet, and is followed by Men-ka-Ra, which is also found nowhere else. But there is some reason to believe that the bearer of this name is identical with the Nit-aqert of the Turin papyrus and the Nitocris of Manetho, and in this connection the confusion between Men-kau-Ra and Nitocris is susceptible of another and perhaps better explanation[105] than that offered by Perring; for although the Third Pyramid has been enlarged, the manner of its enlargement shows that it was done in the age of the Pyramid builders and not so late as the end of the VIth Dynasty. Therefore it is better to accept M. Maspero’s theory of the alterations as given in a preceding page; while the similarity of the names Men-kau-Ra and Men-ka-Ra will show how Manetho was led into the error of assigning the building of the Third Gizeh Pyramid to Queen Nitocris.

The VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties fell through causes of disintegration and decay. The capital was transferred to Heracleopolis, presumably because of the intrusion of an outside people into the Delta.

Some authorities assign the dislodgment of the native dynasty to a perplexing line of foreign kings whose position still defies definition; but Professor Petrie writing in 1901 says: “The group of foreign kings, mainly known by scarabs and cylinders, Khyan, Samqan, Anthar, Yaqebar, Shesha, and Uazed, are probably of the XVth-XVIth Dynasties, though some connections place them shortly before the XIIth Dynasty.” All we yet know of the intrusion is concisely stated by Eduard Meyer: “We may with some certainty assume that strange Syrian races attacked Egypt and probably ruled the land or part of it for a while.”

Two legitimate kings of the IXth or Xth Dynasty now stand out prominently; Ab-meri-Ra (Kheti) who may be the Achthoes of Manetho, the first of his recorded IXth Dynasty, and Ka-meri-Ra. But the most interesting historical information of this period is from three tombs of the princes of Assiut; Kheti I, Tefa-ba, and Kheti II.

The Thebans had now practically obtained their independence, and certain circumstances indicate that the beginning of the XIth Dynasty was contemporary with the Xth. Such a state of affairs will explain the singular fact that Manetho assigns only forty-three years to the XIth Dynasty. For it is held that he ignored contemporaneous dynasties, and therefore may have rejected about one hundred and twenty years, during which period he does not recognise the XIth Dynasty as legitimate.a

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER III. THE OLD THEBAN KINGDOM

The history of civilisation is very largely the history of a few great cities.

There has been no great people without its great metropolis. The overthrow of such a city, as in the case of Nineveh, or Babylon, or Tyre, or Sardis, often meant the subjugation or destruction of a nation. And the mere transfer of supremacy from one city to another within the same country meant the beginning of a new era. It was so in Egypt when the centre of authority shifted from Memphis to Thebes. By common consent, historians mark the period in which Thebes became the home of the ruling monarch, and hence the capital of Egypt, as a new era in Egyptian history. This new era is commonly designated the Old Theban Kingdom, or the Middle Kingdom.

This era of the Theban supremacy was by no means a homogeneous epoch. It saw many dynasties established and overthrown; it even witnessed the conquest of the country by a strange horde from the east, a horde spoken of as the Shepherd invaders, whose leaders, seated upon the throne of Egypt for some generations, have passed into history as the Hyksos or Shepherd kings. These outsiders held the power so long, indeed, that they may very well have felt entitled to call themselves Egyptians. The later generations had as good claim to that name as, for example, any Caucasian has to call himself an American. Yet when the Hyksos kings were finally overthrown, the feat seems to have been regarded as the expulsion of intruders, and the verdict of posterity is that the governmental power passed back to its rightful possessors. It would be difficult, however, to say how much the ethnic status of the race may have been modified by the influence of these many generations of outsiders. Be that as it may, the Egyptians who expelled the Hyksos kings and established anew the “native” dynasties were in some respects a very different people from the Egyptians whom the Hyksos had overthrown. But before expanding this point we had best follow the fortunes of the Old Theban Kingdom itself.

THE ELEVENTH DYNASTY

For the XIth Dynasty we have as yet no good list; the total number of kings even is unknown, but the best authorities agree that there were probably about nine. But since this dynasty undoubtedly ruled at Thebes[107] simultaneously with the Xth at Heracleopolis, whence it had been driven from Memphis, the question as to just which Theban prince so far overcame the legitimate government in the struggle that had been long going on, as to be acknowledged the ruler of Egypt, will probably never reach solution. Professor Petrie begins with Antef I and follows him with Mentuhotep I, Antef II, Antef III, Mentuhotep II, Antef IV, and then Nub-kheper-Ra (or Antef V). Concerning the latter and his two successors, there is no question; we emerge once more into the daylight. After Nub-kheper-Ra comes Neb-kher-Ra whose other name was Mentuhotep, and we designate him as the third of his name. He stands fifty-seventh on the Abydos list.a

The princely line from which the commanding figure of King Mentuhotep III stood forth to the healing of the reunited kingdom was of Theban origin. The feeble ancestors of his race bore alternately the names of Antef and Mentuhotep. They had set up their regal dwelling in that city of Thebes which afterward became of such world-wide importance, and their tombs (simple, homely tiled pyramids) lay at the foot of the “Western Mountain” of the Theban necropolis. Here a few ruins of ancient date indicate the names of the rulers. It was here too that, more than twenty years ago, two quite modest sarcophagi belonging to these Pharaohs were brought to light by some Arabs in search of gold, and unconscious of what a treasure they had found.

In that part of the city of the dead which nowadays goes among the inhabitants by the name of Assassif, those sarcophagi were found, only lightly covered with sand and rubble and one of them containing the embalmed body of a king, his head adorned with a royal circlet. The cover of the casket was richly gilded, and the sacred symbols which decked the central strip soon revealed the name of Pharaoh Antef in the royal cartouche.

In the year 1854, when Brugsch for the first time stayed on the banks of the Nile, he had the unhoped-for good fortune to stumble, in a lumber room in the house of the Greek consul, across the coffin of a second Antef, which was notably distinguished from the first by his cognomen of “the Great.” The coffin is now preserved in the Louvre, a precious and valuable relic of the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs.

The black rocks of the island of Konosso, near Osiris’s favoured island of Philæ above the First Cataract, preserve the memory of the Mentuhotep (II) who bore the royal name of Neb-taui-Ra, “Sun of the Lord of the Country.” A sculpture chiselled in the hard stone shows the Pharaoh as the conqueror of thirteen peoples, and as the devout servant of his original progenitor Khem or Amsu, the famous god of Coptos. The place of this name (Qobt it was actually called among the Egyptians) had at that time a great reputation.

This Mentuhotep also appears perpetuated on the wall in the rocky valley, together with his mother, Ama. He had, so his inscription distinctly says, caused a deep well, ten cubits in diameter, to be sunk in the waterless, desolate waste, in order to provide reviving draughts of fresh water for all pilgrims with their beasts of burden and all men whom the king had commissioned to quarry stone in the hot valley.

Another inscription, dated the 15th of Paophi in the second year of the reign of our Mentuhotep, next commemorates the god Khem, “the Lord of the Peoples of this Wilderness,” then renders homage to other heavenly beings, and informs us how it was marvellously contrived to convey the gigantic blocks of stone Nileward to serve for the future housing of the royal corpse. A high dignitary, Amenemhat by name, and appointed to[108] superintend all works of the kind for Pharaoh, received an express order to forward the heavy load of the sarcophagus and its cover from the mountains to the ruler’s eternal resting-place.

Long was the way and hard the labour of the task, for the mighty mass of hewn stone measured eight cubits in length, whilst the proportion of this to the breadth and height was as four to two. When rich offerings had been made to the gods, three thousand strong men succeeded in moving the gigantic weight of stone from its place, and in rolling it down the valley to the river.

We have less information respecting the other Mentuhotep, whose pyramid bears the name of Khu-asu, “the most shining place.” A tombstone found in the carefully explored valley of Abydos commemorates the priest who presented the offerings of the dead to the departed king at the pyramid.

The list of kings closes with Sankh-ka-Ra, the fifty-eighth of the long series of Abydos. The rock valley of Hammamat commemorates him in an inscription of the highest value. From Coptos the way led through waterless deserts toward the coast of the Red Sea, and was much frequented by merchants, who, for the sake of profit, ventured life and limb, and after painful wanderings on desert paths trusted themselves in the harbour to frail vessels, that they might steer for the southern regions of the farther coasts and bring valuable goods, principally costly spices full of sweet savours, back from the land of Punt to their native country and the temples of the gods.

THE VOYAGE TO PUNT

Under the name of Punt, the ancient inhabitants of Kamit understood a distant country, washed by the great sea, full of valleys and hills, rich in ebony and other valuable woods, in incense, balsam, precious metals and stones; rich also in animals, for there are camelopards, cheetahs, panthers, dog-headed apes, and long-tailed monkeys. Winged creatures with strange feathers flew up to the boughs of wonderful trees, especially of the incense tree and the cocoanut palm. Such was the conception of the Egyptian Ophir, doubtless the coast of the modern Somaliland, which lies in view of Arabia, though divided from it by the sea.

According to the old dim legend, the land of Punt was the primeval dwelling of the gods. From Punt the heavenly beings had, headed by Amen, Horus, and Hathor, passed into the Nile Valley. The passage of the gods had consecrated the coast lands, which the waters of the Red Sea washed as far as Punt and whose very name “God’s land” (Ta-neter) recalls the legend. Amen is called Haq, that is, “King of Punt,” Hathor similarly, “Lady and Ruler of Punt,” while Hor was spoken of as “the holy morning star which rises westward from the land of Punt.” To this same country belongs that idol of Bes, the ancient figure of the deity in the land of Punt, who in frequent wanderings obtained a footing, not only in Egypt, but in Arabia and other countries of Asia, as far as the Greek islands. The deformed figure of Bes, with its grinning visage, is none other than the benevolent Dionysus [Bacchus], who, pilgrimaging through the world, dispenses gentle manners, peace, and cheerfulness to the nations with a lavish hand.

It was under Sankh-ka-Ra that the first Ophir-voyage to Punt and Ophir was accomplished. According to the words of the inscription, everything which might be serviceable to the expedition was wisely arranged before-hand, and Pharaoh selected as its leader and guide the noble Hannu, who gives the following account of it:

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“I was despatched to conduct the ships toward the land of Punt, to fetch Pharaoh sweet-smelling spices, which the princes of the red country collect with the fear and anxiety which he inspires in all peoples. And I started from the city of Coptos.”—“And his majesty gave the order that the armed men who were to accompany me should come from the southern land of the Thebaïd.”

After a defaced portion in the inscription, which was fairly long, and of which enough had been preserved to show that in the course of the story there was some account of how the armed force was provided for offence and defence against the enemy, and how the king’s officers, with stone-cutters and other work-people, accompanied the train, Hannu continues:

“And I journeyed thence with a host of three thousand men, and came through the place of the red hamlet, and through a cultivated land. I had skins prepared and barrows to convey the water-jars to the number of twenty. And every one of my people carried a burden daily … and another adjusted the load. And I had a reservoir dug twelve rods in length in a wood, and two basins at a place called Atahet, one of them a rod and twenty cubits, and the other a rod and thirty cubits. And I made another in Ateb, ten cubits by ten each way, that it might hold water a cubit deep. Thereafter I came to the harbour town of Seba (?), and I had cargo vessels built to bring commodities of every kind. And I made a great sacrifice of oxen, cows, and goats. And when I returned from Seba (?) I had fulfilled the king’s command, for I brought him all kinds of commodities, which I had found in the harbours of the sacred country. And I descended into the street of Uak and Rohan, and took with me valuable stones for the statues of the houses of God. The like has never been since there were kings, and such things were never done by any blood relations of the king who were sent to those places since the time (the rule) of the sun-god Ra. And I did thus for the king on account of the great favour he cherished for me.”

M. Chabas, who first rendered this important inscription and its contents intelligible, has joined to his translation some valuable remarks concerning the direction of the desert road from Coptos to the Red Sea. By this means we may satisfy ourselves that already in those remote times, the ancient Egyptians had opened a road by which to establish communication with the land of Punt, and to transport its products—rare and costly commodities—to the valley of the Nile.

In his description of the journey, Hannu speaks of five principal camps, at which the wanderers rested, and men and animals (then only donkeys, the only beast of burden referred to, at least at this period) fortified themselves for the toilsome journey in the enjoyment of the fresh drinking-water. It is, moreover, this same road which, even in the time of the Ptolemies and Romans, led from Coptos in the direction of the sunrise, to the harbour of Leukos Limen (now Kosseir), on the Red Sea, the great highway and commercial route of the merchants of all countries, who carried on a trade in the wondrous products of Arabia and India, the bridge of nations which once connected Asia and Europe.

Although, in view of the most recent discoveries, we must no longer regard Punt and the oft referred to “sacred country” as the exclusive designation of the southern and western coasts of Arabia itself, still nothing is more probable than that, already in the reign of King Sankh-ka-Ra, five and twenty centuries before the beginning of our era, the Egyptians had some knowledge of the coasts of Yemen and of the Hadramaut on the opposite side of the sea, which lay in sight of the incense-bearing mountains of Punt and of[110] the sacred country. Here, in these regions, should, as it seems to us, that mysterious place be sought which, in remotely prehistoric times, sent forth the restless Cushite nations oversea from Arabia, like swarms of locusts, to plant themselves on the highly favoured coasts of Punt and the “sacred country,” and to extend their wanderings further inland in a westerly and northerly direction.b

THE TWELFTH DYNASTY

It is hard to keep in mind the long sweep of these meagre Egyptian chronicles, but it must not be forgotten that we are handling dynasties of long duration and not single reigns.

It was not without a struggle that the XIIth Dynasty was established, and the first years of the reign of the Theban king Amenemhat were harassed by the conspiracies and plots of those who contested his claim to the throne.

In the Instructions to his son, Usertsen I, the king says: “When night came I took an hour of ease. I stretched myself on the soft couch in my palace and sought repose, my spirit had nearly succumbed to sleep, when lo! they gathered themselves together in arms against me, and I became as weak as a serpent of the field. Then I arose to fight with my own hands, and I found I had but to strike to conquer. If I attacked an armed foe, he fled before me, and I had no reverse of fortune.” And it was to this force of character that the king owed his success. “Never in my life have I given way,” he continues, “either in a grasshopper plague or in conspiracies set afoot in the palace, or when, taking advantage of my youth, they banded together against me.”

The south of Memphis was the final scene of struggle against the new dynasty, but after the surrender of the fortified town of Titui, the whole of Egypt surrendered to the sway of Amenemhat, who now devoted himself to the reparation of the evils of war and to expeditions against the Libyans, Nubians, and Asiatics, whose invasions were so ruinous to the country. “I caused the mourner,” says the king in the same Instructions, “to mourn no longer, and his lamentation was no longer heard. Perpetual fighting was no more seen, whereas, before my coming, they fought together as bulls who think not of the past, whilst the welfare of the wise and unwise was equally ignored. I have had the land tilled as far as Abu [Elephantine]. I have spread joy as far as Adhu [the Delta]. I am the creator of the three kinds of grain, I am the friend of Nopu [the god of grain]. In answer to my prayer the Nile has inundated the fields; nobody hungers or thirsts under my sway, for my orders have been obeyed. All that I said was a fresh[111] source of love; I have overthrown the lion and killed the crocodile. I have conquered the Uauat, I have taken the Mazau captive, and I have forced the Sati [Asiatics] to follow me like harriers.”

In Nubia the king had the gold mines reopened which had been abandoned since the time of Pepi.

As Amenemhat was not young when he ascended the throne, he began to feel the effects of age after reigning nineteen years, and this led to his making his son, Usertsen I, co-regent with himself with all the titles and prerogatives of royalty. “I raised thee from a subject,” he writes in the Instructions, “I granted thee the free use of thy arms that thou mightest be feared on that account. As for me, I arrayed myself in the fine stuffs of my palace so as to look like one of the flowers of my garden. I perfumed myself as freely as if the essences were drawn like water from the cisterns.”

At the end of some years the king took so little active part in the government, that his name was often omitted in the monuments beside that of his son; but he still gave wise counsels from the palace where he lived in retirement. To the wisdom of his advice much of the prosperity of Egypt was due, and such a reputation for ruling did the old king acquire, that in a treatise, composed by a contemporary, on the art of governing, the writer represents him rising like a god and addressing his son: “Thou reignest over two worlds, thou dost govern three regions. Act better than thy predecessors, maintain harmony between thy subjects and thyself lest they succumb to fear; sit not by thyself in their midst, do not take to thy heart and treat as thy brother only him that is rich and of high degree, neither accord thy friendship to newcomers whose devotion is not proved.”

In support of his Instructions the old king gives a résumé of his life, of which some extracts have been already given. Although only three pages long, this little work became quite a classic, and kept its place a thousand years, for at the time of the XIXth Dynasty, it was still copied in the schools and studied as an exercise of style by young scribes.

Nothing is more illustrative of the state of Egypt and the neighbouring countries at this period than certain passages from the memoirs of an adventurer named Sineh. Arrived at the court of a little Asiatic chief, who asks for an account of the power of the Egyptian sovereign, and who was surprised[112] at hearing that a death had taken place in the palace of Amenemhat without his knowledge, the traveller gives a poetical panegyric of the king and his son: “My exile into that country was arranged by God, for Egypt is under the control of a master, who is called ‘the benevolent god’; and the terror of him extends to all the surrounding nations, as the power of the goddess Sekhet extends over the earth in the season of sickness. I told him my thoughts and he replied, ‘We grant thee immunity.’ His son, Usertsen, entered the palace, for he manages his father’s business; he is an incomparable god, he has never had his equal, he is a counsellor wise in his designs, benevolent in his decrees, who goes and comes at his will. He conquers foreign states and reports his conquests to his father, who remains in the palace. He is a brave man, who rules by the sword, his courage is unequalled; when he sees barbarians, he rushes forward and scatters the predatory hordes. He is the hurler of javelins who makes the hand of the enemy feeble, those whom he strikes never more lift the lance. He is formidable in shattering skulls, and has never been overcome. He is a swift runner who kills the fugitive, and no one can overtake him. He is alert and ready. He is a lion who strikes with his claws, nor ever lets go from his grip; he is a heart girded in armour at the sight of the hosts, and leaves nothing standing behind him; he is a valiant man rushing forward at the sight of battle. He seizes his buckler, he bounds forward and kills without a second blow. Nobody can withstand his arrow; before he bends his bow, the barbarians flee in front of him like hares, for the great goddess has commanded him to slay those who ignore her name, and when he attacks, he spares not. All are laid low. He is a wonderful friend, who knows how to win love; his country loves him more than herself, and rejoices in him more than in a god; and both men and women are prompt to render him homage. He is king; he has commanded ever since he was born; the nation has multiplied under him, the unique being of a divine essence by whom this land rejoices to be governed. He has enlarged the frontiers of the South, whilst not coveting the region of the North. He has subjugated the Asiatics and conquered the Nemashatu.”

The co-regency of Usertsen I with Amenemhat I, instituted ten years before the king’s death, led to Usertsen’s being accepted as successor to his father without any opposition. And following his parent’s example, this king (after forty-two years) appointed his son, Amenemhat II, to be co-regent with himself; and he, thirty-two years later, did the same with Usertsen II; Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV also reigned a long time together. The only reigns in which there is no proof of co-regency are those of Usertsen III and Queen Sebek-neferu-Ra (the Schemiophris of Manetho), who was the last of the dynasty, which had lasted 213 years, 1 month, and 27 days.

[113]

The history of the XIIth Egyptian dynasty is certainly given with greater accuracy and completeness than that of any of the others. In spite of the deficiencies in the biographies of the eight monarchs, and the accounts of their wars, we have an uninterrupted survey of the development of their policy, and even after the lapse of four thousand years and more, we can form a fair idea of the Egypt of the period. As engineers, soldiers, friends of art, and patrons of agriculture, they were indefatigable in their work of aggrandising the country. With the enlargement of the boundaries of the kingdom, the hordes of barbarians on the frontiers were dispersed, Nubia was conquered; the valley of the Middle Nile, from the First Cataract to the Fourth, was colonised; the supply of water was more equalised by the creation of Lake Mœris and a system of canals; and towns like Heliopolis, Thebes, Tanis, and a hundred others of less repute, were adorned with fine buildings. Egypt, in fact, at this time, was in a most prosperous state, and if later she obtained more renown by her Asiatic wars and distant conquests, the period of this dynasty, when each generation of Pharaohs followed in the other’s steps of good administration, was the most happy and peaceful of all.

The two scenes of warfare of the Pharaohs at this period were Syria on the east of the Delta, and Nubia, properly so called, on the south of Elephantine. One would have thought that the large tracts of sand, separating the Syrians from Egypt, would have prevented any incursions from that quarter. But the nomadic tribes made such inroads on that district that a series of fortresses had to be built from the Red Sea to the Nile, to protect the entrance of the Wady Tumilat from the hordes; and this wall, begun by Amenemhat and continued by his successors, marked the extreme limit, at that time, of the empire of the Pharaohs in this direction. Beyond stretched the desert, a world almost unknown to the Egyptians at that time.

Of the people of Syria and Palestine they had only vague ideas brought thither by the caravans or brought to the ports in the Mediterranean by sailors who had been there. Sometimes, however, a party of emigrants, or even whole tribes, driven from their country by misery or revolutions, would arrive and settle in Egypt. One of the bas-reliefs of the tomb of Khnumhotep depicts the arrival of such a party. It represents thirty-seven men, women, and children, brought before the governor of the nome of Mah, to whom they present a sort of greenish paint, called moszmit, and two boxes. They are armed like Egyptians with bows, javelins, axes, and clubs; one of them plays, as he walks, on an instrument resembling an old Greek lyre in shape. The cut of their dress, the brilliancy and good taste of the fringed and patterned materials, the elegance of most of the things they have with them, testify to an advanced stage of civilisation, albeit inferior to that of Egypt. Asia already supplied Egypt with slaves, perfumes, cedar wood, and cedar essences, enamelled precious stones, lapis-lazuli, and the embroidered and dyed stuffs of which Chaldea retained the monopoly until the time of the Romans.c

The monuments of this great period provoked wonder among the ancients, and the old traveller and historian Herodotus thus describes the marvels of Egypt:a

MONUMENTS OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY: A CLASSICAL VIEW

It was the resolution of all the princes to leave behind them a common monument of their fame:—With this view, beyond the Lake Mœris, near the City of Crocodiles, they constructed a labyrinth, which exceeds, I can[114] truly say, all that has been said of it; whoever will take the trouble to compare them, will find all the works of Greece much inferior to this, both in regard to the workmanship and expense. The temples of Ephesus and Samos may justly claim admiration, and the Pyramids may individually be compared to many of the magnificent structures of Greece, but even these are inferior to the Labyrinth. It is composed of twelve courts, all of which are covered; their entrances are opposite to each other, six to the north and six to the south; one wall encloses the whole; the apartments are of two kinds, there are fifteen hundred above the surface of the ground, and as many beneath, in all three thousand. Of the former I speak from my own knowledge and observation; of the latter, from the information I received.

The Egyptians who had the care of the subterraneous apartments would not suffer me to see them, and the reason they alleged was, that in these were preserved the sacred crocodiles, and the bodies of the kings who constructed the labyrinth: of these therefore I presume not to speak; but the upper apartments I myself examined, and I pronounce them among the greatest efforts of human industry and art.

The almost infinite number of winding passages through the different courts, excited my warmest admiration: from spacious halls I passed through smaller apartments, and from them again to large and magnificent courts, almost without end. The ceilings and walls are all of marble, the latter richly adorned with the finest sculpture; around each court are pillars of the whitest and most polished marble: at the point where the labyrinth terminates, stands a pyramid one hundred and sixty cubits high, having large figures of animals engraved on its outside, and the entrance to it is by a subterraneous path.

Wonderful as this labyrinth is, the Lake Mœris, near which it stands, is still more extraordinary: the circumference of this is three thousand six hundred stadia, or sixty schæni, which is the length of Egypt about the coast. This lake stretches itself from north to south, and in its deepest parts is two hundred cubits; it is entirely the produce of human industry, which indeed the work itself testifies, for in its centre may be seen two pyramids, each of which is two hundred cubits above and as many beneath the water: upon the summit of each is a colossal statue of marble, in a sitting attitude. The precise altitude of these pyramids is consequently four hundred cubits; these four hundred cubits, or one hundred orgyiæ, are adapted to a stadium of six hundred feet; an orgyia is six feet, or four cubits, for a foot is four palms, and a cubit six.

The waters of the lake are not supplied by springs; the ground which it occupies is of itself remarkably dry, but it communicates by a secret channel with the Nile; for six months the lake empties itself into the Nile, and the remaining six the Nile supplies the lake. During the six months in which the waters of the lake ebb, the fishery which is here carried on furnishes the royal treasury with a talent of silver every day; but as soon as the Nile begins to pour its waters into the lake, it produces no more than twenty minæ.

[The silver which the fishery of this lake produced was, says Larcher, appropriated to find the queen with clothes and perfume.]

The inhabitants affirm of this lake, that it has a subterraneous passage inclining inland towards the west, to the mountains above Memphis, where it discharges itself into the Libyan sands. I was anxious to know what became of the earth, which must somewhere have necessarily been heaped up in digging this lake; as my search after it was fruitless, I made inquiries concerning it of those who lived nearer the lake. I was the more willing to believe[115] them, when they told me where it was carried, as I had before heard of a similar expedient used at Nineveh, an Assyrian city. Some robbers, who were solicitous to get possession of the immense treasures of Sardanapalus, King of Nineveh, which were deposited in subterraneous apartments, began from the place where they lived to dig under ground, in a direction towards them. Having taken the most accurate measurement, they continued their mine to the palace of the king; as night approached they regularly emptied the earth into the Tigris, which flows near Nineveh, and at length accomplished their purpose. A plan entirely similar was executed in Egypt, except that the work was here carried on not by night but by day; the Egyptians threw the earth into the Nile, as they dug it from the trench; thus it was regularly dispersed, and this, as they told me, was the process of the lake’s formation.d

Thus Herodotus explains what he but faintly understood; his translator William Beloe has added the following commentary:a

Herodotus, Diodorus, and Pomponius Mela differ but little in opinion concerning its extent. The design of it was probably to hinder the Nile from overflowing the country too much, which was effected by drawing off such a quantity of water, when it was apprehended that there might be an inundation sufficient to hurt the land. [The regulation of the Nile floods has been accomplished in the latter part of the nineteenth century, by dams elsewhere described.] The water, Pococke observes, is of a disagreeable muddy taste, and almost as salt as the sea, which quality it probably contracts from the nitre that is in the earth, and the salt which is every year left in the mud. The circumference of the lake at present is no more than fifty leagues. Larcher says we must distinguish betwixt the lake itself, and the canal of communication from the Nile; that the former was the work of nature, the latter of art. This canal, a most stupendous effort of art, is still entire; it is called Bahr Yusuf, the canal of Joseph. According to Savary it is forty leagues in length.

There were two other canals with sluices at their mouths, from the lake to the river, which were alternately shut and opened when the Nile increased or decreased. This work united every advantage, and supplied the deficiencies of a low inundation, by retaining water which would uselessly have been expended in the sea. It was still more beneficial when the increase of the Nile was too great, by receiving that superfluity which would have prevented seed-time. Were the canal of Joseph cleansed, the ancient mounds repaired, and the sluices restored, this lake might again serve the same purposes. The pyramids described by Herodotus no longer exist, neither are they mentioned by Strabo.

When it is considered that this was the work of an individual, and that its object was the advantage and comfort of a numerous people, it must be agreed, with M. Savary, that the king who constructed it performed a far more glorious work than either the Pyramids or the Labyrinth.e

The Sphinx itself is hardly more distinctly Egyptian than the ruins of Karnak, a solemn memorial of Old Thebes. The famed Egyptologist, Lepsius, visited the region and described the impression the ruins made on him as follows:a

THE RUINS OF KARNAK

The river here divides the broad valley into two unequal parts. On the west side it approaches close to the precipitous Libyan range, which there projects; on the eastern side it bounds a wide fruitful plain, extending[116] as far as Medamut, a spot situated on the border of the Arabian Desert, several hours distant. On this side stood the actual town of Thebes, which seems to have been chiefly grouped round the two great temples of Karnak and Luxor, situated above half an hour apart. Karnak lies more to the north, and farther removed from the Nile; Luxor is now actually washed by the waves of the river, and may even formerly have been the harbour of the city. The west side of the river contained the necropolis of Thebes, and all the temples which stood here referred more or less to the worship of the dead; indeed, all the inhabitants of this part, which was afterwards comprehended by the Greeks under the name of Memnonia, seem to have been principally occupied with the care of the dead and their tombs. The former extent of the Memnonia may be now distinguished by Gurnah and Medinet Habu, places situated at the northern and southern extremities.

A survey of the Theban monuments naturally begins with the ruins of Karnak. Here stood the great royal temple of the hundred-gated Thebes, which was dedicated to Amen-Ra, the King of the Gods, and to the peculiar local god of the city of Amen, so called after him (No-Amen, Diospolis). Ap, along with the feminine article Tap, from which the Greeks made Thebe, was the name of one particular sanctuary of Amen. It is also often employed in hieroglyphics in the singular, or still more frequently in plural (Napu), as the name of the town; for which reason the Greeks naturally, without changing the article along with it, generally used the plural θῆβαι. The whole history of the Egyptian monarchy, after the city of Amen was raised to be one of the two royal residences in the land, is connected with this temple. All dynasties emulated in the glory of having contributed their share to the enlargement, embellishment, or restoration of this national sanctuary.

It was founded by their first king, the mighty Usertsen I, under the Old Theban Royal Dynasty (XIIth of Manetho), between 2400 and 2300 B.C., and even now exhibits some ruins in the centre of the building from that period bearing the name of this king. During the dynasties immediately succeeding, which for several centuries groaned under the yoke of the victorious hereditary enemy, this sanctuary no doubt was also deserted, and nothing has been preserved which belonged to that period. But after the first king of the XVIIIth Dynasty, Aahmes, in the seventeenth century B.C., had succeeded in his first war against the Hyksos, his two successors, Amenhotep I and Tehutimes I, built round the remains of the most ancient sanctuary a magnificent temple, with a great many chambers round the cella, and with a broad court, and pylons appertaining to it, in front of which Tehutimes I erected two obelisks. Two other pylons, with contiguous court walls, were built by the same king, at a right angle with the temple in the direction of Luxor.

Tehutimes III and his sister enlarged this temple to the back by a hall resting on fifty-six columns, besides many other chambers, which surrounded it on three sides, and were encircled by one common outer wall. The succeeding kings partly closed the temple more perfectly in front, partly built new independent temples near it, and also placed two more large pylons towards the southwest, in front of those erected by Tehutimes I, so that now four lofty pylons formed the magnificent entrance to the principal temple on this side.

But a far more splendid enlargement of the temple was executed in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. by the great Pharaohs of the XIXth[117] Dynasty; for Seti I, the father of Ramses Meri-Amen, added in the original axis of the temple the most magnificent hall of pillars that was ever seen in Egypt or elsewhere. The stone roof, supported by 134 columns, covers a space of 164 feet in depth, and 320 feet in breadth. Each of the twelve central columns is 36 feet in circumference, and 66 feet high beneath the architrave; the other columns, 40 feet high, are 27 feet in circumference.

It is impossible to describe the overwhelming impression which is experienced upon entering for the first time into this forest of columns, and wandering from one range into the other, between the lofty figures of gods and kings on every side represented on them, projecting sometimes entirely, sometimes only in part. Every surface is covered with various sculptures, now in relief, now sunk, which were, however, only completed under the successors of the builder; most of them, indeed, by his son Ramses Meri-Amen. In front of this hypostyle hall was placed, at a later period, a great hypæthral court, 270 by 320 feet in extent, decorated on the sides only with colonnades, and entered by a magnificent pylon.

The principal part of the temple terminated here, comprising a length of 1170 feet, not including the row of sphinxes in front of its external pylon, nor the peculiar sanctuary which was placed by Ramses Meri-Amen directly beside the wall farthest back in the temple, and with the same axis, but turned in such a manner that its entrance was on the opposite side. Including these enlargements, the entire length must have amounted to nearly 2000 feet, reckoning to the most southern gate of the external wall, which surrounded the whole space, which was of nearly equal breadth. The later dynasties, who now found the principal temples completed on all sides, but who also were desirous of contributing their share to the embellishment of this centre of the Theban worship, began partly to erect separate small temples on the large level space which was surrounded by the above-mentioned enclosure-wall, partly to extend these temples also externally.f

In almost unfailing sequence decline follows glory; and now, having seen the ruined monuments of the Theban Kingdom, we may turn to consider the ruin of her power.a

THE FALL OF THE THEBAN KINGDOM

The new family (XIIIth Dynasty) which ascended the throne with Sebekhotep I, seems, from numerous similarities of name, to have been connected with the previous dynasty; for instance, two of its rulers took the prename of Amenemhat I, and their surname, generally supposed to have been derived from the god’s name Sebek, is linked to the name of the last queen, Sebek-neferu-Ra.

Sebekhotep I appears only once in the monuments, in a measurement of the height of the Nile at Kummeh in the first year of his reign; besides him only the sixth of his successors, with the remarkable name of Amenie-Antef-Amenemhat are on the two altar tablets of the Theban Amen.

Evidently none of these reigns was of long duration; usurpations and probably also revolts of the nomarchs shook the kingdom, as at the end of the VIth dynasty.

The Turin papyrus has an incision at Ranseneb, the eleventh or twelfth successor of Sebekhotep I. Most of the rulers of the next family (about fifteen in number) are known to us only by single monuments, and we see that they still rule the united kingdoms of Usertsen III, from Tanis to Semneh, albeit in a stormy fashion. Certainly one must not estimate the[118] accounts of their power and brilliancy too highly, as has been the case lately. They have left us only short inscriptions and statues, some of which are masterpieces of work, and albeit the former are of short reigns and very circumscribed, they are full of significance. The fact that the sixth king bore the name of Mermesha (i.e. General) shows that he was an usurper. We have two colossal statues of this ruler, found in Tanis. The tenth king, Neferhotep, was the son of a private person, brought perhaps by marriage near to the throne, and we find the name of this ruler here and there on temple buildings at Karnak and Abydos; and finally the five reigns, of which we know the duration are only very short; all these are points which cast a clear light on the condition of Egypt at the time.

The above-named Neferhotep, who reigned eleven years, seems to have been the most powerful ruler of the period; this great ruler appears with his family in inscriptions in the district of the First Cataract (Assuan, Konosso, Sehel) and in the temple of Karnak, also in a large and very interesting inscription at Abydos, and the museum of Bologna has a statue of him, as well as of his second son, Sebekhotep V (Kha-nefer-Ra). The elder, Sehathor, died after a reign of a few months. There was a colossal granite statue of Sebekhotep V found at Tanis, another far in the Nubian country on the island of Arqo, far above the Second Cataract, and the Louvre has two more. There is frequent mention of him at Karnak. The three last rulers of this house are of no great importance. Far less is known of the next rulers than of the above. Their names, probably about a hundred, are divided into dynasties and fill nearly five divisions of the Turin papyrus. Where we have dates, there are, on the whole, about twenty-two, more or less recognisable; they show that the reigns were of short duration, a few months, one or two years, and, far more rarely, three or four years. There is only one case of a longer reign, and that was in the case of the first ruler of the new house, Mer-nefer-Ra Ai, who reigned thirteen years, eight months, and eighteen days.

It follows that only a very few of these kings are known to us through the monuments, and the majority only by insignificant memorials. Their names appear only occasionally in the stone quarries at Hammamat, or in Karnak and Abydos, or they have statues, which are far inferior to those of the preceding epoch.

And yet we have from this, as well as from the preceding epoch, a line of graves and tomb steles in Abydos, as well as numerous rock tombs in El-Kab (Eleithyia), and probably also the great rock graves of Assiut (Lycopolis), which attest the position and power of the high priests of Anubis and the governors of the nome. They are as important for this period as the graves of Beni-Hasan are for the XIIth Dynasty, but unfortunately they are in a much worse condition, and much poorer in historical information.

THE FOREIGN RULE

The facts above mentioned clearly show that the Egypt of this period was governed under conditions similar to those existing in the Roman Empire in the third century after Christ.

In fact, as a fuller light is thrown upon Egyptian history, there seems to have been a whole line of dynasties, evidently local, coexistent with the chief king at Thebes. If Neferhotep and Sebekhotep V still reigned over Egypt from Nubia to Tanis, the Delta was lost under their successors. It is not an improbable theory of Stern’s that Manetho’s XIVth Dynasty of seventy-six[119] kings from Xoïs (Sakha), in the western Delta, included Libyan foreign rulers who occupied the Delta.

But the chief invaders of this time were an Asiatic race who made a violent attack on the power of the Pharaohs at Thebes. They were the Mentu, or, as they are now called, the Mentu of Satet, that is “the barbarous Asiatic country.” They were called the Shepherds or Hyksos by their contemporaries and by Manetho.

Of what race the Hyksos were, is not known. Some points in the account show that we have here to do with an invasion of Bedouin races, one of those frequent raids upon cultivated land by nomads of the desert.

Among the latest opinions on the subject is one that ascribes to the Hyksos a partly Semitic and partly Turanian origin, and accounts for their settling in Egypt by their being crowded out of western Asia in the numerous race conflicts of which that part of the world was the arena. The expelled people could find no resting-place among the wild hordes of Syria, and moved on to the peaceful and fertile valley of the Nile.

It is certain that Semitic and Canaanitish, not Arabic, elements penetrated to Egypt under the Hyksos. The Egyptian language was subsequently sprinkled with Canaanitish words; the specifically Canaanitish divinities Baal Astarte (in the feminine form), Anit, Reshpu, etc., were afterwards extensively worshipped in the eastern Delta, and in the whole of Egypt. In the next centuries we find Canaanitish proper names everywhere.

More accurate information on the invasion of the Hyksos is wanting. It is certain that they settled in Lower Egypt, where they founded a state which they ruled according to the Egyptian fashion. Their chief seats were Avaris (Ha-Uar), the border fortress built or enlarged by them, which is Pelusium, or a place a little to the south; and Tanis, the powerful capital of the eastern Delta, ornamented by numerous buildings of the XIIth Dynasty and the real residence of the Hyksos kings.

It seems, moreover, certain that Memphis, and even the Fayum, remained in their hands; but Upper Egypt was at most conquered only temporarily. Here ruled, during this epoch, the kings mentioned in the five divisions of the Turin papyrus, and their successors, perhaps as tributary vassals, since they occasionally bear the title of Haq, that is, Prince.

King Meneptah, the son of the great Ramses, speaks of this time as “the epoch of the kings of Lower Egypt, since this land Qem was in their (power), and the accursed foe (Aad, the Plague) ruled at the time when the kings of Upper Egypt (were powerless).”

It is very possible that the Hyksos pillaged Egypt in their conquests, but Manetho’s assertion that they systematically destroyed the temples and monuments is contradicted by the following facts. The chief god they worshipped was Sutekh, or Set with the surname of “the Golden,” by which the Sun-Baal is understood. They built him a great temple in Tanis, and his cult was followed in the eastern Delta until later times. He was also called “Lord of Avaris” at this time.

The Egyptian gods were, however, retained; the kings called themselves “sons of Ra” and, like the Egyptian rulers, they chiefly begin their throne names with “Ra.” Egyptian culture was generally adopted by the foreigners.

The fact that we have a mathematical handbook under the rule of a Hyksos king, written “according to old copies,” and that we have a scribe’s palette, presented by the same king to the scribe Atu, shows that writing was in vogue under their rule. The monuments ascribed to them, particularly the sphinxes with kings’ heads, found at Tanis, a group of[120] two men before an altar with fish, the piece of a statue from Mit-Fares in the Fayum, differ widely from the Egyptian type in features and apparel, but the work is evidently that of Egyptian artists, and most carefully executed.

The length of the rule of the Hyksos is as unknown to us as the number of their kings. Manetho makes two dynasties (Dynasties XV and XVI) rule, which, according to Josephus, reigned 511 years altogether over the whole of Egypt, whilst the tables of Africanus give 284 to the XVth (an evident misquotation of Josephus 260) and 518 to the XVIth. For the XVIIth Dynasty, according to Africanus, 43 Shepherds and 43 Theban kings ruled for 151 years; and this is the era of the struggle for freedom, which ended with the expulsion of the Hyksos. It is impossible for these figures to be correct, but there is no means of getting at the historical truth, even approximately. It can be said, however, that according to the monuments there is no gap of five hundred or more years between the end of the XIIIth Dynasty and the beginning of the New Kingdom. The pedigrees of the nomarchs and nobles of El-Kab (Eileithyia) give names after a few generations, which are undoubtedly contemporaneous with the XIIIth and XIVth Dynasties.

The monuments of the first rulers of the New Kingdom in Thebes show the closest connection with the more ancient Theban, and strikingly so with those of the XIth Dynasty. There is, certainly between the time of Amenemhat and Sebekhotep and the New Kingdom, no distinctive break in culture and art similar to that between the Old Kingdom of Memphis and the XIIth Dynasty.

Manetho’s figures have evidently to be very considerably reduced. Some of the short-lived rulers of the Egyptian dynasties must be regarded as contemporaneous with the Hyksos kings and connected directly with the first rulers of the New Kingdom who undertook the struggle for emancipation.

If we allow 150 years for the first kings of the XIII Dynasty,—and dates are inevitable,—about four hundred years would be reckoned from the end of the XIIth Dynasty to the expulsion of the Hyksos under Aahmes. Moreover, we also know that a Hyksos king, Nub, reigned four hundred years before Ramses II.g

It will be clear to the reader, from the account just given, that the period of the XIIIth-XVIIth Dynasties is one of which we have very little knowledge. Not only is the Turin papyrus here much broken, but the intrusion of the Hyksos has greatly confused the knowledge we have indirectly from Manetho through Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius, and others. Petrie has made a careful study of the subject, and his conclusions are, in brief, as follows:

1. The Hyksos were not contemporaneous with the 453 years of the XIIIth Dynasty.

2. There is a period of about 100 years during the XIVth Egyptian Dynasty during which the Hyksos gradually came into power, and

3. The XVth Dynasty mentioned by Africanus and Eusebius represents the 260 years of the great Hyksos kings, while Africanus has included this period again in his XVIth Dynasty of 518 years. On the other hand, the XVIth Dynasty mentioned by Eusebius is the Egyptian XVIth of 190 years, in which the native rulers persisted, but were ruled and almost eclipsed by the invaders.

4. The XVIIth Dynasty of both Africanus and Eusebius (it will be remembered that Josephus dealt only with the Hyksos and neglected the contemporary[121] Egyptian sovereigns) is a joint dynasty of Hyksos and Egyptians. The number of its kings is quite unknown, and its period witnessed the struggle of the two races which culminated in the triumph of Aahmes I (XVIIIth Dynasty) and the restoration of the old race.

The following table, compiled from Petrie,h and keeping his dates, will show the situation as viewed by this eminent authority:

Date B.C.	Egyptian Dynasty	Years		Date B.C.	Hyksos Dynasty		Years
2565	XIII, (60 kings)
2112			453	2112	14 years before Hyksos came to power.
			525	2098
	XIV, (76 kings)	184 }			Unknown period of 100 years during which Hyksos harried Egyptians.	}	511
		}		1998		}
1928		}			XV, (6 great Hyksos) 260 years.	}
	XVI, (8 kings)	190 }				}
1738		}		1738		}
	XVII, (? kings)	151 }			XVII, (? kings) 151 years.	}
1587		}		1587		}

THE HYKSOS RULE; THE SEVENTEENTH DYNASTY

It has been most fortunate for our study of antiquity that Josephus’i account of the early history of his people was received by the Greeks with doubt and denial. In an impassioned answer to his critics the great Jewish historian has preserved the only account we possess of the appearance and fortunes of the Hyksos in Egypt, although of course he is wrong in his theory that these people were Hebrews.

He quotes from Manethoj: “There was a king of ours whose name was Timæus.” (The identity of this king has never been determined with certainty. It may have been Amenemhat IV (XIIth Dynasty) or Ra Amenemhat, the third king of the XIIIth.) “Under him it came to pass, I know not how, that God was averse to us, and there came, after a surprising manner, men of ignoble birth out of the eastern parts, and had boldness enough to make an expedition into our country, and with ease subdued it by force, yet without our hazarding a battle with them.”

It is possible that this campaign of unresisted conquest was accomplished with the aid of factors hitherto unknown on the African continent: the war chariot and the horse.a

“So when they had gotten those that governed us under their power, they afterwards burnt down our cities and demolished the temples of the gods, and used all the inhabitants after a most barbarous manner. At length they made one of themselves king, whose name was Salatis; he lived also at Memphis and made both the upper and lower regions pay tribute, and left garrisons in places that were the most proper for them. He chiefly aimed to secure the eastern parts, as foreseeing that the Assyrians, who had then the greatest power, would be desirous of that kingdom and invade them; and as he found in the Saïte [Sethroite] nome, a city very proper for his purpose, and which lay upon the Bubastic channel, called Avaris; this he[122] rebuilt and made very strong by walls, and by a most numerous garrison of two hundred and forty thousand armed men to keep it. Thither Salatis came in summer-time, partly to gather his corn, and pay his soldiers their wages, and partly to exercise his armed men and thereby to terrify foreigners. When this man had reigned thirteen years, after him reigned another, whose name was Beon [or Bnon], for forty-four years, and after him reigned another, called Apachnas, thirty-six years and seven months; after him Apophis reigned sixty-one years, and then Ianias fifty years and one month, after all these reigned Assis forty-nine years and two months. And these six were the first rulers among them, who were all along making war with the Egyptians, and were very desirous gradually to destroy them to the very roots. This whole nation was called Hyksos, i.e. Shepherd kings. These people and their descendants kept possession of Egypt 511 years.

“And after this the kings of the Thebaïd and of the other parts of Egypt made an insurrection against the Shepherds, and a terrible and long war was made between them.

“Under a king whose name was Alisphragmuthosis, the Shepherds were subdued, and were indeed driven out of other parts of Egypt, but were shut up in a place that contained ten thousand acres; this place was named Avaris.

“The Shepherds built a wall around all this place, which was a large and strong wall, and this in order to keep all their possessions and their prey within a place of strength, but that Thummosis, the son of Alisphragmuthosis made an attempt to take them by force and by siege, with four hundred and eighty thousand men to lie round about them; but that upon his despair of taking the place by that siege, they came to an agreement with them, that they should leave Egypt and go without any harm to be done them, whithersoever they would; and after this agreement was made, they went away with their whole families and effects, not fewer in number than two hundred and forty thousand, and took their journey from Egypt, through the wilderness, for Syria; but as they were in fear of the Assyrians, who had then the dominion over Asia, they built a city in that country[123] which is now called Judah, and that large enough to contain this great number of men, and called it Hierosolyma (Jerusalem).”i

The modern historian is brought face to face with the fact that for the period of the XIIIth to the XVIIIth Dynasties there is even less material and information than for that other “dark age” extending from the VIIth to the XIth. The main facts of our knowledge concerning the XIIIth Dynasty have been given in the preceding chapter. The Hyksos were settled in the land but had not yet come to power. The Pharaohs were still in full possession of Upper and Lower Egypt.

This cannot have been the case with the XIVth, which Manetho tells us had its capital at Xoïs (Sakha, a town on the western side of the central Delta), from which it would seem probable that the invaders drove the ruling house to the west instead of southward, up the Nile, perhaps because the broad river and its wide marsh-land were found to be the best means of defence against a people acquainted hitherto with only small and insignificant streams. The Turin papyrus gives eighty-five names for this dynasty; Manetho’s figure is seventy-six, and of only two of them are there even the slightest remains. For the 184 years this dynasty is said to have ruled, the average length of reign is therefore only 2½ years. How may we explain this? There seems to be little doubt that the untrammelled rule of this dynasty lasted but a few years, perhaps less than twenty. By degrees the Hyksos chiefs attained influence and power, until, as Professor Petrie says, the native kings “were merely the puppets of the Hyksos power, the heads of the native administration which was maintained for taxing purposes; like the last emperors of Rome, whose reigns also average two years and a half, or like the Coptic administration of Egypt, maintained during the supremacy of Islam in Egypt as being the only practical way of working the country. Later on, when the Hyksos had established a firm hold on all the land and had a strong rule of their own, these native viceroys were permitted a longer tenure of power, and formed the XVIth Dynasty contemporary with the great Hyksos kings.”

The first Hyksos kings seem, from the very beginning, to have appreciated fully that it was better to exploit the country than to devastate it, and to this end they retained the temple scribes and other officials of the native rulers. The influence of the organised government soon bore effect.

All the pomp and circumstance of Pharaoh’s court were revived; the new sovereigns had become civilised, and they managed, by adopting the titles of the Amenemhats and Usertsens, to legitimise themselves as descendants of Horus and “sons of Ra.” The local religions were not interfered with, but the chief object of their worship was Baal, “the lord of all, a cruel and savage warrior,” and from his great similarity to Set, “the brother and enemy of Osiris,” Baal and Set soon became identified, and Set was now called Sutekh, “the Great Set.”

The six great Hyksos kings—those mentioned in the Josephus-Manetho account—may be considered as composing the XVth Dynasty. Their rule[124] of nearly 260 years marked the zenith of Hyksos power. There was as yet no sign of rebellion amongst the conquered people.

But when we come to the so-called XVIIth Dynasty the years are no longer tranquil and authority undisputed. As stated in the preceding chapter, it is the better plan to regard this dynasty as a joint one of Shepherds and Egyptians, for its rise is wholly lost to sight under the Hyksos power. We know that the Hyksos Apophis (Apepa I) ruled the whole land, for his name is found far in the south; but in the days of his namesake Apophis (Apepa II), some three hundred years later, Thebes was practically independent. The compilers of the lists make mention of unsuccessful attempts at rebellion on the part of the Theban vassals, for some time before Apepa II, but this ruler had to meet a decisive revolt under Seqenen-Ra-Taa I, who was haq (prince or regent) over the South. There is no information as to the cause of the outbreak or its consequences, but the tale of “Apepa and Seqenen-Ra,” so popular with readers five hundred years later, asserts that the cause of the quarrel was a religious one, since Thebes refused to worship no other gods but Sutekh. Seqenen-Ra would seem to have been the descendant of a branch of the royal Egyptian line, settled in the far south to escape the Hyksos oppression, and which, intermarrying with Ethiopian blood, had become possessed of the characteristics of the dark Berber race. With the decay of the Hyksos power, these people gradually worked their way northward from Nubia, and began the re-winning of the land for the ancient line of Pharaohs. For eighty years after the death of Assis we have no names of these Berbers, but finally Seqenen-Ra I, in the days of Apepa II, declared himself “Son of the Sun and King of the Two Egypts,” and the princes of the Saïd made common cause with him. Now the native rulers of the XVIIth Dynasty free themselves from any confusion with the Hyksos, and the strife has become a serious one. A second Seqenen-Ra, bearing the same family name Taa, followed the first, and then a third, whose wife Aah-hotep is one of the great queens of Egyptian history, further celebrated as the mother of the honoured Nefert-ari. Aah-hotep in all probability was married before, to an Egyptian and not a Berber husband, and by him was the mother of an elder Aahmes, who died prematurely, and his three brothers, Kames, Sekhent-neb-Ra, and a second Aahmes, the Amasis of the Greeks, who founded the XVIIIth Dynasty.

Professor Maspero, one of the greatest authorities for this period of Egyptian history, holds to the belief that Seqenen-Ra-Taa III was the sole husband of Aah-hotep, and consequently the father of Aahmes, his brothers, and Nefert-ari. Dr. Petrie, however, one of the most recent of investigators, says: “Aahmes is always (except once) shown of the same colour as other Egyptians, while Nefert-ari is almost always coloured black. And[125] any symbolic reason invented to account for such colouring applies equally to her brother, who is nevertheless not black. As Nefert-ari was especially venerated as the ancestress of the dynasty, we must suppose that she was in the unbroken female line of descent, in which the royal succession appears to have been reckoned, and hence her black colour is more likely to have come through her father. The only conclusion, if these points should be established, is that the Queen Aah-hotep had two husbands; the one black (the father of Nefert-ari), the celebrated Seqenen-Ra, who was of Berber type; the other an Egyptian, the father of Aahmes and his elder brothers.”

There is little known of Aah-hotep’s origin beyond that she was of pure royal descent, but there are documents which attest to her very long and eventful life. In the tenth year of Amenhotep I she was still active and must have been nearly ninety years old; and if a stele found at Iufi is to be credited, she was alive, and about a hundred, under her great-grandson Tehutimes I.

Aah-hotep would have had every right to rule as sovereign, but she willingly gave over the power to her sons. When she died her body was embalmed with special care, and a beautifully gilded mummy-case was made for her. Within this coffin was placed the jewelry, presents from husband and sons, which until recently has been the most famous find of its kind. Most of the trinkets are for feminine use: bracelets, solid and hollow gold ankle rings, others of gold beads, lapis lazuli, cornelian, and green feldspar, a fan with a gold inlaid handle, a mirror of gilt bronze with handle of ebony, etc.

This wonderful woman in the course of her long life must have witnessed the whole drama of the restoration. Born when the heel of the Hyksos was still felt in the land, she closed her eyes, not only with her country free and her family firmly seated on the throne, but with the Syrian fatherland of the hated usurpers under heavy tribute, the fruits of the conquests of her own descendants to the third generation.

Kames and Sekhnet-neb-Ra quickly succeeded Seqenen-Ra III. The struggle against the Shepherd kings was kept up, and when Aahmes found himself Pharaoh, nearly the whole of the country was free, and only the provinces about Ha-Uar (Avaris) remained to the Hyksos; but here they were prepared to make a desperate stand.a

---

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CHAPTER IV. THE RESTORATION

[XVIIIth Dynasty: ca. 1635-1365 B.C.]

It has just been shown that the leading dynasties of the Theban kingdom, before the invasion of the Hyksos, had essentially a pacific character. Their epoch was a period of social, literary and artistic activity, such as usually comes to a nation only at the apex of its career, or as it is passing into its decline. It was so here. Egypt as a nation was soon overthrown; an outside people invaded the sacred precincts, so jealously guarded hitherto from even peaceful intrusion, usurped the power, and for some centuries dominated the original inhabitants. These invaders, as we have seen, were of a more primitive type of civilisation than the Egyptians. Their reign was a time of apparently retrograde evolution, marked to after generations by no lasting monuments such as made earlier generations famous.

Yet it may be questioned whether, on the whole, the influence of these semi-barbarians upon the cultured but somewhat degenerate stock of the ancient civilisation, may not have been in the highest degree beneficial.

Everywhere in history we shall see that the virile stock is the stock which is not weakened by too many generations of that luxury which seems to be the necessary associate of higher culture. We shall see also that a mixed race is always at a premium. A nation which shuts itself off from contact with other nations is in the condition of a finely inbred race of domesticated animals. The racial peculiarities may be greatly developed, certain finer traits of mind and body may be highly intensified. But in the full rounding out of aggregate powers of mind and body, there is a deviation that amounts to degeneration. And when this weakened stock comes into competition with some cruder but sturdier race, the issue is not in doubt; the fate awaits it that befel the Egyptians at the hands of the “barbaric” Hyksos invaders.

But a degenerate or perverted stock often shows marvellous powers of recuperation under influence of changed conditions, and an infusion of fresh blood grafted on such a stock can work wonders. It is said that the highly developed greyhound was useless as a hunting dog till crossed with a strain of bulldog—an infusion of blood which, while not marring the distinctive physical peculiarities of the hound, yet quite sufficed to supply the lacking stamina and courage. It may be questioned whether precisely such a vitalising influence as this may not have come to the Egyptians through the[127] Hyksos invasion. It is hardly to be supposed that the invaders remained for centuries in Egypt in sufficient numbers to maintain absolute political control without having some ethnic influence; and if this be admitted, it is hardly in doubt, physiologically speaking, that such influence, in this closely inbred race, would be beneficial. It might graft the bulldog spirit of the Hyksos upon the greyhound-spirited Egyptian nation. But whether or not this be the explanation of the change that now came over the national spirit, it was surely a bulldog nation that now emerged from the Hyksos thraldom and started out upon a world-conquest. In tracing the course of events in this new epoch we see Egypt approaching the apex of its power.

THE HYKSOS EXPULSION: AAHMES AND HIS SUCCESSORS

Aahmes must have been between twenty-five and thirty years of age when, as survivor of his elder brothers, he came to the throne. He had married Nefert-ari, his sister or half-sister, as the case may be, who may previously have been an inmate of his brothers’ harems as well; and her own royal rights, joined to his own, established a legal claim for Aahmes to the kingdom such as few Pharaohs have possessed.

His mummy shows him to have been of medium height, with well-developed neck and chest. The head is small, the forehead low and narrow, the cheek bones project, and the hair is thick and wavy. He was undoubtedly a strong, active, warlike man, which qualities won him success in his wars.

From what we know now of the condition of the struggle against the Hyksos, at the time of the accession of Aahmes,—that their rule had been limited to the district around Avaris,—no doubt the credit due to this king for finally expelling them has been greatly exaggerated. Yet, concentrated and strongly intrenched as they were in the fortress of Ha-Uar, they were by no means insignificant adversaries. From their position, made the more inaccessible by the marsh-lands and rivers of the Delta, and by the neighbouring desert, there was always danger of an attempt upon Memphis, and Aahmes is the one who removed this last menace to the re-established kingdom, and made his dominion over the whole country secure. Therefore the official chroniclers had every reason to begin a new dynasty with the accession of this great king.

For the actual expulsion of the Hyksos we have two accounts: that of Manetho transcribed by Josephus and quoted in the preceding chapter, and that of the doughty namesake of the king, Aahmes-si-Abana (son of Abana), as recorded on his tomb at El-Kab.

The Manetho version runs that Aahmes (Alisphragmuthosis) shut the Shepherds up in Avaris, whence they were finally ejected and driven into Syria by his grandson, Tehutimes I. This, however, is a mistake, and the Egyptian historian has undoubtedly confused the taking of Avaris with the Syrian wars of Tehutimes. Aahmes-si-Abana makes no mention of Tehutimes taking Avaris.a

His account, therefore, is the more accurate and complete. This is the tale on his tomb:

“The dead Admiral Aahmes, son of Abana. He speaks thus:[128] ‘I say to you, all men; and I make known to you the rewards and honours that have fallen to my lot. I was presented with golden gifts eight times before the whole land, and with many slaves, male and female; likewise I was given much land. The title of “the Brave” which I gained shall never perish in this land.’

“He speaks further: ‘I saw the light in the city of Nekheb [El-Kab]. My father was a captain of King Seqenen-Ra; Baba son of Roant was his name. Then I took his place on the ship called The Calf, in the days of King Neb-pehthet-Ra [Aahmes]. I was young and had no wife and I wore the semt cloth and the shennu [garments of youth]. But as soon as I had taken a house, I was placed on the ship The North because of my valour, and I had to attend the sovereign—life, health, strength be his—on foot when he rode forth in his chariot.

“‘The town of Ha-Uar [Avaris] was besieged, and I showed my worth in the presence of his Majesty. I was promoted to the ship Kha-em-men-nefer [Accession in Memphis]. They fought in the Pazekthu canal, near Avaris. I fought hand to hand, and I carried off a hand. The king’s herald saw this, and the golden collar of bravery was given me. They fought a second time at this place and again I captured a hand; a second golden gift was given me.

“‘They fought at Ta-kemt, south of the city. There I took a living prisoner. I plunged into the water—I led him through the water so as to keep away from the road to the town. This was made known to the herald of the king; I received the golden gift once more.

“‘They took Ha-Uar; I carried away from thence one man and three women; his Majesty gave them to me as slaves.’”b

In the time of the Ptolemies, tradition had it that King Aahmes appeared before Avaris with an army of four hundred and eighty thousand men, that there was a long siege, which was finally ended by the king treating with the besieged and permitting them to depart peacefully, with their wives, children, and possessions, into Syria. But the truth is, that Aahmes had a well organised and equipped army of fifteen to twenty thousand men, and that the town was taken on the second attack. The enemy left their last strongholds in haste and retreated into the bordering provinces of Syria. For some reason—they may have threatened him from some new vantage point, or he may have wished to deal a final crushing blow—Aahmes determined to cross the frontier, which he did in the fifth year of his reign. It was the first time in centuries that the king of Egypt had set foot in Asia, and even now he barely crossed the threshold.a

Admiral Aahmes continues his narrative:

“They besieged the town of Sharhana [Sherohan], in the year V, and his Majesty took it. I carried off from thence two women and one hand, and the golden collar of valour was given me. And my captives were given me for slaves.”

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After the capture of Sherohan, Aahmes went on to the border provinces of Zahi (Phœnicia) and then turned back. The fall of the Palestine town crushed the Hyksos’ last hope of recovering their Egyptian domain. The majority of their race had not fled with the army, but had remained with other tribes that had followed them into Egypt—the Israelites among them—to accept whatever lot was meted out by the new conquerors. The yoke was not imposed equally throughout the land. Those living in the Delta regions were reduced to slavery, and all that part of the country was well fortified to resist the Bedouin.

Aahmes returned to Africa only to find his presence needed in the South. The land of Nubia, tributary to the lords of Thebes, had been somewhat neglected during the long struggle which the Pharaoh had just successfully terminated. The southern races had failed to assimilate the gift of culture and civilisation thrust upon them by the rulers of the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasties, and kept to their own customs while the temples erected by Usertsen and Amenemhat crumbled and vanished. From out this disordered state developed a serious invasion from the Sudan. Hostile tribes—which ones, we know not—descended the Nile, outraging the people and desecrating the sanctuaries. Aahmes hastened to meet them.

“His Majesty went south,” runs the record of Aahmes the admiral, “to Khent-en-nefer to destroy the Anu Khenti, and his Majesty made great havoc among them. I captured two live men and three hands; once more I was given the gold of valour, and my two captives were given to me for slaves. Then his Majesty came down the river; his heart swelled with his brave and victorious deeds; he had conquered the people of the South and of the North.”

The triumph of the return was dimmed by disquieting news from the North. The remains of the Hyksos race had taken advantage of Aahmes’ absence in the South to break out in rebellion. There seem to have been two outbursts. One by the Aata, probably a branch of the Hyksos, which marched southward and was destroyed by Aahmes at Tentoa, the other by a powerful faction under a certain Teta-an. Aahmes-si-Abana tells of his fate:

“Then came that enemy named Teta-an; he had brought wicked rebels together. But his Majesty slaughtered him and his slaves even to extinction.”b

Thus was stamped out the last spark of Asiatic resistance. There are no more records of expeditions undertaken in this Pharaoh’s reign—at least none in which he took part.

From the crushing of Teta-an, about the sixth year, to the twenty-second, the monuments are silent; and when again they speak we find a peaceful and not a warlike monarch. It is a law of human progress that an age of military success is followed by a revival of art and building activity. At the end of Aahmes’ reign—he ruled about twenty-five years—this condition prevailed throughout the kingdom. The principal temples of the land were restored or rebuilt. The reward of the gods for their divine aid in the deliverance of Egypt was thus bestowed. A tenth of all the booty of victory was devoted to the needs of the religious cult. Sculptors and painters, for whom there had been centuries of little or no employment, recovered their skill in the revived demand for their services, and, indeed, a new school, with new ideas and methods, came into existence under the great impetus to culture. In the twenty-second year the quarries of Turah were reopened that building stone might be obtained for the temples of Ptah at Memphis and Amen at Thebes, although nothing was done to the latter until a later reign.

[130]

Aahmes died when he was between fifty and sixty. They buried the great Pharaoh in a modest place he had prepared for himself in the necropolis of Drah-abu’l-Neggah. His worship continued for nearly a thousand years, and of him—and still more of Queen Nefert-ari—there exist more instances of adoration than of any other ruler.

Aahmes left a numerous progeny, and six or seven of his children had Nefert-ari for mother. The eldest seems to have been named Sapair, but he died when young, and it is probable that a Se-Amen was the second son and that he too never reached maturity. But whether Amenhotep I was the second or third of Aahmes’ male issue, the kingship devolved upon him. As he was still in his minority, the queen mother assumed the reins of government. Nefert-ari had been no idle inmate of her husband’s harem, and she now asserted her many titles to authority, some of which had precedence over those of her husband and son. There is nothing known of her joint rule with Amenhotep, but it was undoubtedly a prosperous one. She was worshipped after death as a divinity, on a plane, indeed, with the great Theban triad, Amen, Khonsu, and Mut, for all the rights of the royal line descended through her. Her sons, Sapair and Amenhotep, her daughters, Set-amen, Set-kames, and Merit-amen, also shared in the worship.

Amenhotep does not seem to have been ambitious for foreign conquest. His campaigns were confined to Africa. The chief chronicle of his reign is again that tomb at El-Kab whereon Aahmes, son of Abana, recorded his exploits. The brave admiral was now nearly fifty years of age.

“It fell to me,” he relates, “to carry King Zeser-ka-Ra [Amenhotep I] on his voyage to Cush, where he went to extend the frontiers of Egypt. His majesty smote these Anu Khenti [Nubians] from the midst of his troops.

[131]

“Behold, I led our soldiers and I fought with all my strength. The king saw my bravery, as I captured two hands and brought them to his Majesty. In two days I bore his Majesty back to Egypt from the upper land. And I was given the golden gift and two female slaves, and I was raised to the dignity of ‘Warrior of the King.’”

The Nubian campaign was a short and unimportant one. A more important one was directed against the Amukehaka, who apparently were a portion of the Libyan race of the Tuhennu. These people had for centuries been restless and given trouble to the Pharaohs, but the strength of the New Kingdom was now entirely able to cope with them. Notwithstanding these few campaigns, the reign of Amenhotep I is to be characterised as one of peace and internal prosperity. He merely attained in the South and West that security his father had brought about in the North. Commerce, agriculture, and town life flourished, and indeed he well deserved the veneration which for centuries was accorded him in the Theban capital and where he is represented as Osiris. The coffin and mummy of this king were among Professor Maspero’s wonderful find at Deir-el-Bahari. He thus tells of it: “Long garlands of faded flowers deck the mummy from head to foot. A wasp attracted by their scent must have settled upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the lid; the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the balsams of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed uncrumpled through the long centuries.”

Amenhotep married his own sister, Aah-hotep II, and among their children was a princess, Aahmes. The Pharaoh had also, by a concubine, Sensenb, a son, Tehutimes, who was married to his half-sister Aahmes. Tehutimes was probably a little younger than his wife. Aahmes, from her pure royal descent, had far more claim to the throne than her husband and brother, but for some reason she yielded her rights, and Tehutimes was crowned at Thebes the 21st of Phamenoth, the third month. If he had been co-regent with his father, it must have been for a short time only. The new king was a tall, broad-shouldered, well-knit man, possessed of great powers of endurance. His full round face is marked with a long nose and square chin, and his thick lips wear a smiling but firm expression.

The beginnings of a new spirit, which was destined to break up the isolation of the kingdoms of antiquity, were stirring in this monarch’s soul. With his own country in practical subjection, there came that inevitable desire to intrude into other lands. We have seen how the Pharaohs had always shown a certain timidity about passing the Isthmus of Suez, and how Aahmes, well equipped for foreign conquest as he was, had hastened home after he had once driven the fleeing Hyksos across the border. His was no spirit of world conquest; but with Tehutimes the case was different, although certain domestic troubles kept him for the time at home. The neighbouring land of Syria, with its large and wealthy towns, growing richer every day through a well-organised commerce on land and sea, had previously been invaded by the Chaldeans and was now under their undisputed sway; and when this same spirit was once aroused in the fresh and vigorous kingdom of the restoration, what was more natural than that its cupidity should turn in this same direction? But some difficulties at home for the time being prevented, Tehutimes I had to repress outbreaks in the vicinity of the Second and Third Cataracts.

The story of Aahmes, now nearly seventy years of age, relates:

“It fell to me to carry the king Aa-kheper-ka-Ra [Tehutimes I] on his voyage to Khent-en-nefer for the purpose of punishing the rebels among the[132] tribes and of quelling the marauders from the hills. On his ships I showed valour, and I was raised to be an admiral of the marines. Their people were carried off alive and captives. His Majesty returned down the river; all the lands were now under his rule. That vile king of the Anu of Khenti was held head down when the king landed at Thebes.”

It would be valuable and interesting to know what impression the strange land of Syria, with its wide, irregular plains, its high, snow-topped mountains, its walled towns perched in difficult positions in inaccessible places, its people different in customs and with a civilisation not below their own, made upon the Theban legions when at last they found themselves in Palestine. But of what they thought and felt, they have left no word. The lines with which Aahmes of El-Kab closes the record of this long life—he must have been over ninety when he died—goes no more into detail than the rest of his account.

“After this, his Majesty—life, health, and strength be his—went to Ruthen to take satisfaction upon the countries. His Majesty arrived at Naharain [Upper Mesopotamia]; he found the enemy that conspired against him. His Majesty made great destruction among them; an immense number of live captives was carried off from the victories.

“Behold, I was at the head of our soldiers. His Majesty saw my bravery as I captured a chariot, its horses and those who were in it. I took them to his Majesty and was once more given the collar of gold for valour. I have grown up and reached old age; my honours are many. I shall rest in my tomb which I myself have made.”

Tehutimes in his first campaign went far beyond his grandfather, and his route—Gaza to Megiddo, to Kadesh, to Carchemish—became in later times that followed by the Egyptians whenever they descended upon the Euphrates. Of the fortunes of his progress we have not the slightest information, except as Aahmes tells us, he met the enemy in Naharain. The opposing army was under the command of the king of Mitanni, or perhaps one of the captains of the Kossæan king of Babylon, and all the petty princes of the northern provinces served in it with their troops to repel the new invader. But the victory was Tehutimes’. No doubt his army was superior to that of his opponents. Its organisation and training had steadily improved since the days of Aahmes, for it was constantly called into service against the tribes of Ethiopia and Libya. The Syrians were wanting neither in efficiency nor bravery, but their country was much disorganised and their number of fighting men by no means so great as their enemy’s. Therefore they could not command such a force as the Egyptians mustered against them.

Tehutimes erected a stele on the Euphrates to mark the limits of his dominion, and then turned back, richly laden, to Thebes. The later Pharaohs, whenever they invaded Asia, pursued similar methods—a sudden advance diagonally to the northeast, routing and dispersing any opposing force, spreading destruction on every hand, then a quick return to the fatherland, before the approaching winter would put an end to all action.

But Tehutimes’ success in his first expedition was so decisive, so overwhelming, that he never found it necessary again to cross the Isthmus. Southern Syria made no murmur against the burden laid upon it, although the North, it is true, soon slipped from the Pharaoh’s grasp, if indeed he ever had his grip upon it. A strong garrison was left at Gaza, and the king returned to his still rebellious subjects in Ethiopia and Nubia. Two or three rebellions were easily silenced. On these expeditions Tehutimes passed through the old canal built by Usertsen III, and on the rocks that[133] border it have been found many interesting inscriptions relating to the trip. One at Assuan reads, “Year III, Pakhons 20, his Majesty passed this canal in force and power in his campaign to crush Ethiopia, the vile”; on another there is cut, “His Majesty came to Cush to crush the vile”; and on a third, “His Majesty commanded to clear this canal, after he found it filled with stones so that no boat could pass up it. He passed up it, his heart filled with joy.” The king now placed the affairs of his southern lands in the hands of a viceroy, who is called “Royal Son of Cush,” and must, therefore, have had the blood of Ra in his veins. Likewise the king made extensive provisions for fortifications. He restored the fortresses of Semneh and Kummeh to the efficiency they possessed in the great days of the XIIth Dynasty, and he built a brickwork citadel to command the Nile on the island of Tombos, near the Third Cataract. All these precautions enabled Tehutimes I to live out the remainder of a reign of about twenty-five years in complete peace. The strange circumstance of his later years and the problems of his successor are well recounted in Maspero’s monumental work on “The Struggle of the Nations” and his history of the ancient oriental peoples.a

The position of Tehutimes I was, indeed, a curious one; although de facto absolute in power, his children by Queen Aahmes took precedence of him, for by her mother’s descent she had a better right to the crown than her husband, and legally the king should have retired in favour of his sons as soon as they were old enough to reign. [According to Petrie, these two were children of Amenhotep I by Queen Aah-hotep and consequently brothers of Queen Aahmes.] The eldest of them, Uazmes, died early. The second, Amenmes, lived at least to attain adolescence: he was allowed to share the crown with his father from the fourth year of the latter’s reign, and he also held a military command in the Delta, but before long he also died, and Tehutimes I was left with only one son—a Tehutimes like himself—to succeed him. The mother of this prince was a certain Mut-nefert, half-sister to the king on his father’s side, who enjoyed such a high rank in the royal family that her husband allowed her to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on the mother’s side, however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her son from being recognised as heir-apparent; hence the occupation of the “seat of Horus” reverted once more to a woman, Hatshepsitu, the eldest daughter of Aahmes.

TEHUTIMES II; QUEEN HATSHEPSU

Hatshepsitu herself was not, however, of purely divine descent. Her paternal ancestor, Sensenb, had not been a scion of the royal house, and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the sanctity of the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defect of birth could be remedied only by a miracle, and the ancestral god, becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of conception had to condescend to infuse fresh virtue into his race in this manner. The inscriptions with which Hatshepsitu decorated her chapel relate how, on that fateful night, Amen descended upon Aahmes in a flood of perfume and light. The queen received him favourably, and the divine spouse on leaving her announced to her the approaching birth of a daughter, in whom his valour and strength should be manifested once more here below.

The sequel of the story is displayed in a series of pictures. The protecting divinities who preside over the birth of children conduct the queen[134] to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on her face, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display in this portrait of her a finished work of art. The child enters the world amid shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her and her double, constitute themselves her nurses. At the appointed time, her earthly father summons the great nobles to a solemn festival, and presents to them his daughter, who is to reign with him over Egypt and the world.

From henceforth Hatshepsitu adopts every possible device to conceal her sex. She changes the termination of her name, and calls herself Hatshepsu, the “Chief of the Nobles,” in lieu of Hatshepsitu, the “Chief of the Favourites.” She becomes the King Maat-ka-Ra, and on the occasion of all public ceremonies she appears in male costume.

We see her represented on Theban monuments with uncovered shoulders, devoid of breasts, wearing the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while the diadem rests on her closely cut hair, and the false beard depends from her chin. She retained, however, the feminine pronoun in speaking of herself, and also an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which declared her to be the betrothed of Amen—Khnem Amen. Her father united her while still young to her brother Tehutimes, who appears to have been her junior, and this fact doubtless explains the very subordinate part which he plays beside the queen. When Tehutimes I died, Egyptian etiquette demanded that a man should be at the head of affairs, and this youth succeeded his father in office: but Hatshepsu, while relinquishing the semblance of power and the externals of pomp to her husband, kept the direction of the state entirely in her own hands. The portraits of her which have been preserved represent her as having refined features, with a proud and energetic expression. The oval of the face is elongated, the cheeks a little hollow, and the eyes deep set under the arch of the brow, while the lips are thin and tightly closed. She governed with so firm a hand that neither Egypt nor its foreign vassals dared to make any serious attempt to withdraw themselves from her authority. One raid, in which several prisoners were taken, punished a rising of the Shasu in central Syria, while the usual expeditions maintained order among the peoples of Ethiopia, and quenched any attempt which they might make to revolt. When in the second year of his reign the news was brought to Tehutimes II that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile had ceased to observe the conditions which his father had imposed upon them, he “became furious as a panther,” and assembling his troops, set out for war without further delay. The presence of the king with the army filled the rebels with dismay, and a campaign of a few weeks put an end to their attempt at rebelling. Tehutimes II carried on the works begun by his father, but did not long survive him. The mask on his coffin represents him with a smiling and amiable countenance, and with the fine pathetic eyes which show his descent from the Pharaohs of the XIIth Dynasty. By his marriage[135] with Hatshepsu, Tehutimes left daughters only, but he had one son, also a Tehutimes,[3] by a woman of low birth, perhaps merely a slave, whose name was Aset. Hatshepsu proclaimed this child her successor, for his youth and humble parentage could not excite her jealousy. She betrothed him to her one surviving daughter, Hatshepsitu II, and having thus settled the succession in the main line, she continued to rule alone in the name of her nephew who was still a minor, as she had done formerly in the case of her half-brother.

Her reign was a prosperous one, but whether the flourishing condition of things was owing to the ability of her political administration or to her fortunate choice of ministers, we are unable to tell. She pressed forward the work of building with great activity, under the direction of her architect Senmut, not only at Deir-el-Bahari, but at Karnak, and indeed everywhere in Thebes. The plans of the building had been arranged under Tehutimes I, and their execution had been carried out so quickly that in many cases the queen had merely to see to the sculptural ornamentation on the all-but-completed walls. This work, however, afforded her sufficient excuse, according to Egyptian custom, to attribute the whole structure to herself, and the opinion she had of her own powers is exhibited with great naïveté in her inscriptions. [A famous incident of her reign was the sending out of an expedition across the Red Sea in quest of incense.]

When Tehutimes III approached manhood, his aunt, the queen, instead of abdicating in his favour, associated him with herself more frequently in the external acts of government. She was forced to yield him precedence in those religious ceremonies which could be performed by a man only, such as the dedication of one of the city gates of Ombos, and the foundation and marking out of a temple at Medinet Habu; but for the most part she obliged him to remain in the background and take a secondary place beside her. We are unable to determine the precise moment when this dual sovereignty came to an end. It was still existent in the XVIth year of the reign, but it had ceased before the XXIInd year. Death alone could take the sceptre from the hands that held it, and Tehutimes had to curb his impatience for many a long day before becoming the real master of Egypt. He was about twenty-five years of age[4] when this event took place, and he[136] immediately revenged himself for the long repression he had undergone, by endeavouring to destroy the very remembrance of her whom he regarded as a usurper. Every portrait of her that he could deface without exposing himself to being accused of sacrilege, was cut away, and he substituted for her name either that of Tehutimes I or of Tehutimes II. A complete political change was effected both at home and abroad from the first day of his accession to power. Hatshepsu had been averse to war. During the whole of her reign there had not been a single campaign undertaken beyond the Isthmus of Suez, and by the end of her life she had lost nearly all that her father had gained in Syria; the people of Kharu [Phœnicia] had shaken off the yoke, probably at the instigation of the king of the Amorites, and nothing remained to Egypt of the Asiatic province but Gaza, Sharhana, and the neighbouring villages.c

One of the first acts of Tehutimes III as sole king, was to lead an expedition against Syria, where the constant revolts had weakened the power of Egypt. He arrived at Gaza on the 3rd (or 4th) of the month of Pakhons. There he celebrated the anniversary of his coronation, and the twenty-third year of his reign. He then proceeded by gentle marches to Ihem, twenty miles to the north of Gaza, where he learned from his envoys, that the king of Kadesh had intrenched himself at Megiddo, with a contingent of the rebels.

TRIUMPHS OF TEHUTIMES III; HIS SUCCESSORS

Fear of the danger of the mountain defiles near Aluna made some of the officers wish to turn back and go by the Ziftha road. But Tehutimes indignantly rejected their counsel, saying:

“By my life, by the love that Ra has for me, by the favour bestowed on me by my father Amen, my Majesty will take this road of Aluna, whether it please you to take any of the other routes suggested, or whether it please you to follow me. For would not these vile enemies, detested by Ra, say: ‘If Pharaoh is going by another route, he is going for fear of us’?”

Then the Pharaoh’s generals replied: “Thy father Amen protects thee; we will follow whithersoever thou leadest, as servants follow their lord.”

Three days’ rapid march brought the army, without any mishap, to the town of Aluna, close to a torrent called the Qina, a little to the south of Megiddo, and there it encamped for the night in the face of the enemy with the watchwords:

“Keep a good heart: courage! watch well! Be alert in the camp!”

Dawn found the Egyptian army ranged for battle; the right wing was directed towards the River Qina, while the left extended into the plain towards the northwest of Megiddo. After a sharp encounter, the Syrians were seized by a panic, and abandoning their horses and chariots on the battle-field, they fled back to Megiddo; but fear of the enemy kept the gates closed, and among those drawn up to the ramparts, by ropes let down by the townspeople, was the lord of Kadesh himself.

“If it had pleased God not to let the soldiers of his Majesty be employed in carrying off the spoils of his vile enemies, they could then have taken Megiddo,”—it says in the account of the campaign. The cupidity of the conquerors saved the lives of the vanquished, for, although they took possession on the field of battle of 2132 horses, 994 chariots, and all the booty left behind by the Asiatics, they took only 140 prisoners and killed only 83.

[137]

In the evening, when the victorious army marched by Tehutimes III with the spoils, the king exclaimed:

“Had you taken Megiddo, it would have been a very great favour granted me by my father this day; for as all the chiefs of the country are within the walls, it would be like taking a thousand cities to take Megiddo.”

However, the place, being soon besieged, capitulated in a few days. With its fall, the campaign ended; and the chiefs of Syria and Mesopotamia hastened to take the oath of allegiance and to pay tribute to Egypt.

Three successive campaigns, from the year XXIV to the year XXVIII of this reign, completed the subjugation of Syria and southern Phœnicia.

In the year XXIX, Tehutimes proceeded to Naharain, the territory between the rivers Orontes and Euphrates, and the districts on the west of Khilibu were sacked to the glory of the god of Thebes, whose coffers were soon filled with the gold, silver, and treasures of the Hittite princes.

As the king was returning to Egypt with “a joyful heart,” he suddenly bethought him that the Zahi, rich in wine, oil and corn, and beyond the line of military routes, would be a wealthy and easy prey. So he turned to the east, and made a raid on the district of Aradus, which the Egyptians robbed of cattle and produce.

The following year the Thebans returned again, and the towns of Kadesh, Semyra, Aradus, and Arathu, on the shores of Lake Nisrana, fell one after the other. The sons of their chiefs were kept as hostages. The campaign lasted till XXXI; and the king celebrated his victory by putting up two steles near Carchemish, one on the east of the river, and the other near the stele erected by his father, or grandfather, Tehutimes I, nearly half a century before.

Then he conquered Ni[5] and received tribute from its prince. The sojourn of Tehutimes III in this town was signalised by the performance of the royal duty of killing wild beasts; and the king is reported to have hunted and killed more than one hundred and twenty elephants.

All the tribes of Syria had to submit to the powerful yoke of the Egyptians, and the chiefs of the Libanu, the Kheta [Hittites] and the king of Singara took the oath of allegiance.

Nevertheless there was a revolt under the king of Naharain in XXXVII, which was quelled by a great battle not far from Aluna. In XLI the seat of war was in Cœle-Syria; and the king of Kadesh refusing to do homage to Pharaoh, a deadly struggle took place under the ramparts of the city. The besieged tried the ruse of letting a mare loose among the chariots of Tehutimes; but Amenemheb, an officer of the guard, leaped to the ground, disembowelled the animal with a thrust of his sword, and cutting off its tail, presented it to the king; and the same brave officer, at the head of a picked body of men, succeeded in making a breach and forcing an entrance into the town.

Hardly a year passed without a skirmish with the Uauatu in Ethiopia. But the tribes, having trembled so long before the Pharaohs, fled at the first sign of attack. The Egyptians had only to take possession of the flocks and herds, or any booty left in the deserted villages, and the campaign of the commander was a series of easy victories, which were celebrated with triumph on their return home.

The success of Tehutimes III in his campaigns increased the size and wealth of the kingdom and gave ground for his being accorded the name of[138] “the Great”; and it is not surprising to see that his deeds formed the subject of poetic panegyrics of the period, inscribed on the Temple of Karnak:

“I am come,” said the god Amen to him, “to permit thee to crush the princes of Zahi; I cast them at thy feet in their districts; I make them see thy Majesty as a lord of light, when thou shinest before them in my likeness.

“I am come to let thee crush the barbarians of Asia, to take captive the chiefs of Ruthen. I will make them see thy Majesty decked with warlike apparel, when thou wieldest thy arms upon the chariot.

“I am come to let thee crush the land of the East; Kefa (Phœnicia) and Asebi (Cyprus) are in fear of thee; I make them see thy Majesty like a young bull, firm of heart and irresistible with thy horns.

“I am come to let thee crush the people who reside in their ports. And the regions of Mathen tremble before thee. I make them see thy Majesty like the hippopotamus, lord of terror and unapproachable upon the waters.

“I am come to let thee crush the people who reside in their islands. Those who live on the bosom of the sea are within reach of thy roaring. I make them see thy Majesty as an avenger on the back of his victim.

“I am come to let thee crush the Tuhennu. The isles of the Uthent are at thy disposal. I make them see thy Majesty like that of a furious lion, that strews the valley with corpses.

“I am come to let thee crush the maritime countries, so that the girdle of the oceans is in thy hand. I make them see that thy Majesty, as the king of birds, sees everything with one glance.

“I am come to let thee crush the lords of the sands who live in the lagunes; to let thee lead the dwellers upon the sand into captivity. I make them see thy Majesty like a jackal of the South, a king of runners, a scourer of the two regions.

“I am come to let thee crush the barbarians of Nubia. As far as the land of Shat, all is in thy hand. I make them see thy Majesty like unto thy two brothers, Hor and Set, whose arms I have united to secure thy power.”

So much success appealed to the imagination of the people, and Tehutimes III was soon regarded as a hero of romance, as were Khufu and Usertsen I. Only one of the legends circulated for centuries after his death is still extant.

The prince of Joppa revolted and took the field against the Egyptians. The Pharaoh, unable at that time to leave his country, sent Thutii, one of his bravest generals, to quell the insurrection. The town was soon taken.

Tehutimes died on the last day of Phamenoth in the year LIV of his reign, and was buried at Thebes.

Amenhotep II succeeded his father Tehutimes III.

The Syrians thought that the coming of a new king of Egypt meant a time for casting off the yoke of the Pharaohs. But they soon saw their mistake. Amenhotep laid waste the districts of the upper Jordan, and “like a terrible lion which puts a country to flight,” on Tybi 26th he crossed the Arseth to reconnoitre the passes of Anato. When “some Asiatics appeared on horseback to bar his approach, he seized their weapons of war, and his prowess equalled the mysterious power of Set, for the barbarians fled the glance.”

On the 10th Epiphi he took Ni without striking a blow. The inhabitants, men and women, were on the walls to do honour to his Majesty. Other places, like Akerith, underwent long siege, before surrendering. But the insurrection was entirely quelled by the year III, and in the course of the campaign the Pharaoh captured seven chiefs of the country of Thakhis. Six[139] of them were solemnly sacrificed to Amen, their hands and heads being exposed on the walls of the temple of Karnak. The seventh was treated in the same way at Napata, as an example to the Ethiopian princes and to make them respect the authority of Pharaoh.

An insurrection of the tribes in the desert, and the oases on the east of Egypt, was quelled by Amenemheb, who had the same post under Amenhotep as he had under Tehutimes III.

Tehutimes IV, son of Amenhotep, was the next king of Egypt, and his successful campaigns confirmed his power in Syria and Ethiopia.

Under Amenhotep III, who succeeded Tehutimes IV, the boundaries of Egyptian domination were fixed at the Euphrates on the north, and on the south by the land of the Gallas.

The Syrians were now completely under the Egyptian yoke, and willingly sent their daughters to the royal harem; the old-time wars had developed into occasional raids for the acquisition of slaves or workmen for the building operations in the valley of the Nile.

The last kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty were distinguished by the name of “heretic kings,” for as they resented the increasing sacerdotal power of the cult of Amen they established opposition cults. Tehutimes IV discarded the Great Sphinx and restored the old cult of Horemkhu (“The Sun in the Two Horizons”). Amenhotep III brought to Thebes the religion of Aten, the solar disk, and in the year X of his reign inaugurated a festival at Karnak in honour of the new religion. And Amenhotep IV, to free himself from the power of the high priest at Thebes, determined to have a new capital for his kingdom, in which Aten should be the supreme god. The religion of Aten was probably the most ancient form of the religions of Ra. The disk, before which protestations were made, was not only the shining and visible form of the divinity, it was the god himself.

Amenhotep III married a wife of foreign origin and religion, Thi. He had by her a son who succeeded him under the name of Amenhotep IV. The figure of Amenhotep IV, as made known to us by the monuments, exhibits those peculiar and strange characteristics which mutilation impresses upon the face, chest, and abdomen of eunuchs. On the other hand, we know that at an early age he married Queen Nefert-Thi and had by her seven daughters. It is therefore probable that if he really did experience the misfortune of which his features seem to bear the evidence, it happened during the wars of Amenhotep III and among the black people of the South. The custom of mutilating prisoners and wounded is, among these people, as old as the world. Amenhotep IV doubtless imbibed religious ideas from his mother, for he manifested a great horror of the cult of Amen and gave his homage to the solar divinities, chiefly to the disk itself.

But the fear of arousing his subjects to revolt restrained him at first from too openly avowing his heresy. He contented himself with changing his name, which contained that of Amen, for that of Khun-aten, “Splendour of the Sun’s disk,” and continued to worship his father Amenhotep and the god Amen himself. Later, his religious fanaticism got the better of his prudence. The cult of Amen was forbidden and his name erased wherever it could be reached. The pure-blooded Egyptians came under suspicion on account of their religion and disappeared from the king’s entourage, giving place to Asiatic personages who resembled Pharaoh and were deprived like him of their virility.

Thebes, so full of monuments consecrated to the fallen god, lost its rank of capital.

[140]

Khun-aten built a new capital at a place in Middle Egypt which to-day bears the name of Tel-el-Amarna, and which he called Khut-aten, where there was nothing to recall the old religion.

The sun was the principal god of the old religion; all the ancient solar divinities, Ra-Horemkhu, Hor, were recognised and respected. Monuments show us the god in the form of a disk whose rays descend toward the earth, each ray terminating in a hand holding the ansated cross—the emblem of life. The disk is called Aten. Wherever the king goes, the solar disk accompanies him and sheds its benediction upon him.

But with all the attention he paid to religion, Khun-aten was, like his ancestors, a great builder and conqueror. Ethiopia, Thebes, and Memphis were fields of his activity, and he continued to exercise sovereign authority in Syria as well as in Africa.

At his death the crown passed to Prince Ai, his foster-brother, and husband of his eldest daughter Tai. The new king, without renouncing the religion of sun-worship, suspended the persecutions which had the cult of Amen for their object and restored the religion of the ancient national divinities. For successors he had his brothers-in-law Tut-ankh-Amen, and later Saa-nekht, whose reign, although short, seems to have been prosperous. Tut-ankh-Amen, at least, is represented as an all-powerful Pharaoh, to whom foreign peoples give trembling homage. [According to Brugsch and Wiedemann and Petrie the order of these kings is Saa-nekht, Tut-ankh-Amen, and Ai—the reverse of the order here given.]

But after them civil and religious wars desolated Egypt; the throne was occupied by ephemeral kings whose names even are unknown to us. [The kings formerly reputed to belong to the end of this dynasty are now, as Professor Petrie remarks, “not of historical substance, but only linguistic questions.” It has been well established that the names in question are either errors or “Ptolemaic bungles,” and they are now assigned to monarchs of this and other dynasties.]

King Hor-em-heb re-established peace, suppressed the solar religion, destroyed Khun-aten’s monuments, and everywhere restored the ancient cult. Outside the country he reconquered Ethiopia, which for the time being had been lost, and made the land of Punt tributary, but risked no expeditions into Syria. The conquests of the Tehutimes and the Amenhoteps, so dearly obtained in this direction, had been lost during the religious wars. The petty local princes had ceased to pay tribute: and to reduce them anew, a whole generation of conquerors was necessary.a

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER V. THE XIXTH DYNASTY

[ca. 1365-1225 B.C.]

We come now to the period when Egypt reached the apex of its power; when a series of great conquering monarchs made the name of Egypt known and feared far beyond the confines of the Nile. Of these great monarchs the name of one in particular was stamped upon the traditions of Asiatic peoples and has passed into popular knowledge. This was Ramses II, known to the Hebrews, and through them to the western world, as the Pharaoh of the Oppression. Great as this monarch was, little was known of him beyond the prejudiced recitals of the Hebrews, until our own time, when the decipherment of the monuments has brought to light the record of many of his warlike deeds. These records, like all such narratives, are highly coloured and told from the standpoint of the conqueror himself; but, with due allowance for exaggeration, they may no doubt be accepted as accounts of actual events.

A peculiar interest attaches to the name of Ramses II in addition to the never failing fascination of the great conqueror. We shall therefore have occasion to review his deeds in detail as told by the poet laureate of the day, and to consider various authoritative estimates, both ancient and modern, that have been passed upon this greatest hero of Egyptian history.a First Maspero:

Hor-em-heb, whose origin is unknown [there seems no reason to deny that he was the famous general whose tomb has been discovered at Saqqarah], nullified the efforts of Amenhotep and the other heretic kings to lessen the power of Thebes and its god, for he re-established the cult of Amen in all its splendour, had the temple of Aten pulled down, and the materials used to erect one of the triumphal entries, leading into the sanctuary of Karnak; the names of the heretic kings were effaced, and their monuments utterly destroyed. The new king had much to do to repair the disasters of the preceding years; at home all the governmental machinery was out of order, and abroad, the countries under the Egyptian yoke had ceased to pay tribute. Hor-em-heb put down brigandage, he punished untrustworthy employers by death, and he restored to the temples the properties which had been taken from them. He imposed a tribute on the distant country of Punt, he made raids on the tribes of the Upper Nile, and boasted of having subjugated the same countries as Tehutimes III. We have no exact account of his conquests except from his monuments, but they were numerous, and his reign seems to have been glorious, prosperous, and long.

[142]

It is not known when the sceptre passed into the hand of Ramses I nor how he was related to his predecessor. [Whether he were the son, son-in-law, or brother of Hor-em-heb, has never been determined.] He had, however, been in the service of Ai, one of the last of the heretic kings, and also of Hor-em-heb, so it was at a somewhat advanced age that he ascended the throne of the Pharaohs. An expedition in the year II against Ethiopia, a short campaign against the Kheta [Hittites], were the chief events of his reign. He died six or seven years after his accession and left his son Seti (the Sethosis of Greek tradition), as his successor.

KING SETI

Seti at once announced himself abroad as a conqueror in the following words:

“His Majesty has just heard that the vile tribes of Shasu have rebelled. The chiefs of their tribes, assembled at one spot, have been filled with blindness of heart and violence so that each one destroys his neighbour.”

Seti pushed right away toward the East across the desert, watered here and there with ponds or springs, each protected by a fortress or at least a tower—“The fortress of the Lion,” “The tower of Seti I,” “The well of Seti I,” etc. Wherever the enemy appeared he was easily routed, his trees destroyed; his harvests pitilessly cut. Going on from station to station, the Egyptians arrived at the two forts of Ribatha [the Rehoboth of the Bible] and Canaan. The latter, favourably situated by a little lake upon one of the last of the Amorite hills, commanded the entrance of one of the richest ports of southern Syria. It submitted at the first onslaught, so the whole of the rich valley was pillaged by the Egyptians.

This first success entailed greater ones; and Seti, going northward, arrived at the port of Lebanon, where he obliged the people to cut down their trees and send them to Egypt for the buildings he had commenced in honour of Amen. From thence he repaired to the valley of the Orontes, there to attack the Kheta [Hittites]; and a victory gained over these traditional enemies of Egypt, formed a happy conclusion to the campaign.[6]

The Pharaoh’s return was one perpetual triumph from the time he appeared on the frontier, where he was welcomed by the priests, until he arrived at Thebes and offered his prisoners to Amen. And Egypt thought that the great days of Tehutimes and Amenhotep had returned.

Unfortunately, however, these triumphs were not so real as they appeared. Southern Syria, crushed by the passage of armies, had abandoned all ideas of any native resistance and surrendered almost without a blow. The Phœnicians considered that a voluntary tribute was less expensive than a war against the Pharaohs, and they amply consoled themselves for the diminution of their liberty by getting hold of the maritime commerce of the Delta.

But on the north the Kheta [Hittites] were more formidable than ever. Free, during the time of the heretic kings, from the perpetual fear of an Egyptian invasion, they not only extended their supremacy over the whole of Naharain, from Carchemish to Kadesh, but they crossed the Taurus, and penetrated into Asia Minor. It is not known how far they carried their dominion, but it seems it did not extend beyond the plain of Cilicia and Catania. Anyhow they entered into direct relations with the people of the southern and eastern parts of the peninsula, the Lycians, the Masu, the[143] Dardanians, and the dwellers of Ilion and Pidasa. Supported by such allies, and sometimes aided by companies of their soldiers, the Kheta were a military power, quite equal to withstanding the Egyptians and waging war against them. Seti saw the position of affairs as soon as he attacked them, and although doubtless he took Kadesh, and the greater number of the Amorite towns on the Orontes without much trouble, the tenacity of the Kheta, always ready to fly to arms in spite of defeats, finally exhausted his patience.

Tired of war, he concluded an alliance with King Maro-sar, son of Shapalul, which lasted until his death. The dominion of the Pharaohs did not extend beyond the Orontes. So, being limited to southern Syria and Phœnicia, it gained in solidarity what it lost in extent. It seems that Seti I instead of simply exacting a tribute, imposed Egyptian governors on some of the conquered peoples, and in some places, like Gaza and Megiddo, stationed permanent garrisons.

The reign of Seti I undeniably marked a brilliant epoch in the history of Egypt. The treasure looted in Syria contributed to some of the most perfect Egyptian monuments, such as the mausoleum at Abydos and the hypostyle hall at Karnak, the tomb of the king. Seti was assisted in these works by his son Ramses. During his father’s lifetime Seti had married the princess Tui of the old royal family, probably the daughter of Hor-em-heb, and granddaughter of Amenhotep III, so that his son Ramses was, from the hour of his birth, considered by the loyalist Egyptians as the only legitimate king. His father, therefore, to prevent a rebellion, was obliged to make him co-regent when he was quite a little boy, although he was not at first taken much into account by either Seti or his ministers.

At ten years of age Ramses is said to have made war in Syria, and, according to Greek tradition, in Arabia. And it was on his return from these campaigns, that, ripened by age and experience, he began to take an active part in the internal government of the kingdom and to claim his royal prerogative. And henceforth we see his increasing personal valour transform him from an obscure prince into a king, a “master of the two worlds.”

Seti, now old, and worn out with the exploits of his youth, gradually conceded all power to his son, and lived in retirement in his palace for the rest of his days, the object of divine honours.

Certain pictures of the temple of Abydos show him seated on a throne amid the gods. He holds the club in one hand and in the other a complex sceptre, combining the different symbols of life and death. Isis is at his side, and the lesser gods sit behind the all-powerful couple, to whom Ramses addresses his prayer. It is a premature apotheosis of which the conception does honour to the regent, but it leaves no doubt of the real state of the kings in their old age. They were worshipped as gods, but they did not reign. Seti was no exception to this common rule; he was worshipped, but he did not reign.

Peace was threatened by an unforeseen danger. The people of Asia Minor had hitherto been beyond the sphere of action of Egypt; but now several races, such as the Shardana and Tyrseni, whose names were new to the ears of the Egyptians, landed on the coast of Africa, and joined with the Libyans. Ramses II defeated them, and the prisoners that he took were incorporated in the Royal Guard; and the others returned to Asia Minor, with such a recollection of their defeat, that Egypt was secure from their invasion for nearly a century. Peace assured in the North, Ramses repaired to Ethiopia, where he spent the last years of his father’s reign in making raids on the nomadic tribes on the banks of the Upper Nile.

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On the news of the death of his father, Ramses left Ethiopia and entered on his duties as sole king at Thebes. He was then at the height of his fortune, and had several sons old enough to fight under his banner. The first years of his reign were not disturbed by any war of importance: in the year II there was a short expedition against the Amorites, and in the year IV there was one to the banks of the Nahr-el-Kelb near Beyrut. The Kheta [Hittites], faithful to the alliance made with Seti, did not try to excite a rebellion; and the people of Canaan, kept in check by the Egyptian garrisons, remained quiet.

RAMSES II, THE GREAT

So all went well till the year IV, when a terrible rebellion broke out. The king of the Kheta (Mau-than-ar, son of Maro-sar) was assassinated and succeeded by his brother, Kheta-sar, who convoked his vassals and allies, and broke with Egypt. Naharain, and its capital Carchemish, Arathu and southern Phœnicia, Kadesh and the country of Amaour, Kati and the Lycians, joined the coalition, and the hope of pillaging the Egyptian provinces of Syria, if not Egypt herself, made Ilion, Pidasa, Kerkesh, the Masu, and Dardanians also join the Kheta against Sesostris [Ramses].

Trojan bands crossed the whole length of the peninsula and encamped in the valley of the Orontes, three hundred miles from their country. The army brought into the field by Ramses shows how easily nations were displaced at that time, for it was composed of Libyans, Mashauasha of Libya, Masu and Shardana, the fruit of the victorious repulsion of the invasion a few years before.

The Pharaoh established the basis of his operations on the frontier of Egypt and the Arabian Desert in the town he had recently founded under the name of Pa-Ramessu-Anekhtu (“the city of Ramses, the Conqueror”). He traversed Canaan, still under his sway, and quickly bore down upon the southern countries, only stopping at Shabatun, a Syrian village, rather to the southwest of Kadesh, and in view of the town. During a halt of some days he surveyed the district, and tried to discover the position of the enemy, having only vague ideas on the subject. But the allies, on the contrary, fully informed by their scouts, who mostly belonged to the nomadic tribes of Shasu, were conversant with all their movements; and the king of the Kheta, their chief, conceived and carried out a clever manœuvre, which would have completely destroyed the Egyptian army, had it not been for the personal bravery of the Pharaoh.

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One day when Ramses had advanced a little to the south of Shabatun, two Bedouins came and said to him:

“Our brothers who are the chiefs of the tribes, allied with the vile chief of the Kheta, send us to tell your Majesty that we wish to serve your Majesty; we are leaving the vile chief of the Kheta, and know that he is in the district of Khilibu at the north of the town of Tunep, where he has retreated from fear of the Pharaoh.”

The king was deceived by this report, which bore the trace of truth, and feeling safe from a surprise by the supposed distance of the enemy (Khilibu being forty miles to the north of Kadesh), he advanced without misgiving, at the head of his household chariotry, whilst the bulk of the army, including the legions of Amen, Ra, Ptah, and Sutekh, followed him from a distance.

Whilst he was thus dividing his forces, the allies, represented by the traitors as far off, were secretly assembling on the northeast of Kadesh and preparing to attack the flank of the Egyptian army on its march to Khilibu. Their number was considerable to judge from the fact that, on the day of the battle, the king of Khilibu alone commanded eighteen thousand picked men; and, besides a well-trained infantry, they had two thousand five hundred chariots, each carrying three men.

During these operations the scouts brought into the general’s camp two other spies they had taken; and the king seems then to have had his suspicions aroused, for he ordered them to be well beaten, so as to make them confess. They then confessed that they had been sent to watch the manœuvres of the Egyptian army, and stated that the allies, assembled at Kadesh, were only waiting for a favourable opportunity to appear. Ramses then called a council of war, and explained their critical position. The officers excused themselves on the plea of the imprudence of the governors of the provinces, who had neglected to reconnoitre every day the position of the enemy, and they despatched an express messenger to bring up the body of the army to the aid of its chief.

Whilst the council was still sitting, the enemy approached, and when the king of the Kheta brought his forces to the south of Kadesh, he attacked the Ra legion, and so cut the Egyptian army in two.

The Pharaoh then in person charged at the head of his household chariotry, and eight times he broke the ranks of the encircling army, rallied his troops, and sustained the shock the rest of the day. Toward evening the Kheta, losing the advantage they had gained in the morning, beat a retreat before the Egyptian army, now in line; and at the approach of night the battle was suspended until the following day, when the allies were completely routed.

The equerry of the Kheta prince, Garbatusa, the general of his infantry and chariots, the chief of the eunuchs, and Khalupsaru, the writer of the annals of the sovereign for posterity, perished on the battle-field. Many corps of the Syrian army cast themselves into the Orontes to try to swim across it. Mazraima, the brother of the (Khetan) king, succeeded in reaching the other bank, but the lord of the country of Nison was drowned. The king of Khilibu was dragged half dead from the water; and pictures of the battle represent him being held head downward to disgorge the water he had swallowed. The conquered army would no doubt have been utterly destroyed, had not a sortie of the garrison of Kadesh arrested the progress of the Egyptians and allowed the fugitives to return to the town. The following day the Khetan king asked for and obtained peace.

But all hopes that this brilliant victory would terminate the war were[146] disappointed. For the country of Canaan and the neighbouring provinces attacked the rear-guard of the victorious army, and the king of the Kheta, profiting by this diversion, broke the peace. The whole of Syria, from the banks of the Euphrates to the Nile, rose in arms. And although there were no more great battles, the next fifteen years were filled with a series of sieges and attacks; and hostilities broke out in one place as fast as peace was concluded in another.

The year VIII saw the Egyptian army in Galilee, under the walls of Merom. In the year XI Askalon was taken in spite of the heroic resistance of the Canaanites. In another campaign the king penetrated as far north as the environs of Tunep, and took two towns of the Kheta. So the war went on from year to year, until the enemies of Ramses were quite exhausted with their useless efforts, and the king of the Kheta once more prayed for peace from the Egyptian sovereign, and it was granted and sealed in the year XXI.

The treaty was originally drawn up in the language of the Kheta, and it was engraved on a sheet of silver which was solemnly offered to the Pharaoh in his city. The articles of the treaty were essentially the same as those drawn up between the kings of Kheta and Ramses I and Seti I. It was stipulated that the peace between the two countries was to be eternal:

“If an enemy march into the countries under the sway of the great king of Egypt and if he send to the king of the Kheta, saying: ‘Come, take arms against them,’ the great king of Kheta will do as he is asked by the great king of Egypt: the great king of Kheta will destroy his enemies. And if the great king of Kheta does not wish to come himself, he will send the archers and chariots of the country of Kheta to the great king of Egypt to destroy his enemies.”

And an analogous clause also assures the king of Kheta of the support of the Egyptian arms. Then come special articles to protect the commerce and industry of the united nations and to render surer the course of justice. Every criminal trying to evade these laws by taking refuge in the neighbouring country will be handed over to the officers of his nation: every fugitive not a criminal, every subject taken away by force, every workman who removes from one territory to another to there take up his abode, will be sent back to his country, without his expatriation being regarded as a crime. He who is thus expelled is not to be punished by the destruction of his house, wife, or children, he is not to be struck in the eyes or on the mouth, or on the feet, as there is no criminal accusation against him.

Equality and perfect reciprocity between the two countries, extradition of criminals and refugees, are the principal conditions of this treaty, which can be considered the most ancient monument of diplomatic science.

The wars of Ramses II terminate with this alliance, but Greek historians have made the Pharaoh, under the name of Sesostris, penetrate and subdue the countries of Media, Persia, Bactriana, and India, as far as the ocean, and even say he penetrated Europe as far as Thrace, where his course was only checked by want of supplies.

From the year XXI to that of Ramses’ death the peace of the country was not disturbed. The conditions were loyally observed, and the alliance between the two sovereigns was soon cemented by a family bond, as Ramses married the eldest daughter of the king of Kheta, and a few years later invited his father-in-law to visit the valley of the Nile. The lord of Kheta acquaints the king of Kati with this approaching journey in these words:

“Be prepared for we are going to Egypt, the word of the king has been spoken; let us obey Sesostris [Ramses]. He gives the breath of life to[147] those he loves, so all the world loves him, and Kheta is in future one with him.”

In the year XXXIII the Syrian prince visited the city of Ramses, probably Thebes; and he is represented on a stele, engraven for the occasion, with his daughter and son-in-law.

So Egypt at last found her most bitter enemies transformed into faithful allies, and “the people of Kamit were henceforth one in heart with those of Kheta, which had not been the case since the time of the god Ra.”

As this alliance was concluded, the king could now devote himself to building monuments. According to the Greek historians, “he had a temple built in each town to the principal god of the place.”

Ramses was indeed a king of builders. During his long sixty-seven years’ reign, he had time to complete the work of several generations, and one can safely say that there is not a ruin in Egypt or Nubia which does not bear his name. The great “speos” [cave-temple] of Isambul perpetuated the memory of his campaigns against the negroes and Syrians, and four colossal monoliths, twenty metres high, adorn the entrance. At Thebes there was added to the temple of Amenhotep (Luxor) a court with two pylons and two obelisks of granite, the finest of which is on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The temple of Gurnah, founded by Seti in honour of Ramses I, was finished and consecrated. The Ramesseum, known to the ancients by the name of Tomb of Osymandias, gives a sculptured account of the campaign of the year V; and the hand of Ramses II is seen in the necropolis of Abydos, as well as at Memphis and Bubastis and in the quarries of Silsilis, as well as in the mines of Sinai.

The temple of Tanis, neglected by the sovereigns of the XVIIIth Dynasty, was restored and enlarged; and the town which was in ruins, was rebuilt. In many places the architects effaced on the statues and temples the names of their royal builders, and substituted the cartouches of Ramses II. The decoration of the hypostyle hall of Karnak is certainly due to this king: Ramses I conceived the plan, Seti commenced it, and Ramses II decorated it entirely. From the year III, Ramses was also greatly interested in the working of the gold mines in Nubia, and established a line of stations with cisterns and wells along the road leading from the Nile to Gebel Ollaqi. Then he had the network of canals, which water Lower Egypt, cleared, including the one between the Nile and the Red Sea on the borders of the desert. He repaired the walls and fortifications which protected Egypt from the Bedouins; and as political necessity led him to reside on the west of the Delta, he founded several towns on the frontier, the most important of which was Ramses Anekhtu.

The poets of the period have left us pompous descriptions of this city: “It is situated,” they say, “between Syria and Egypt; it is full of delicious provisions; it is like unto Hermonthis. Its length is that of Memphis, the sun rises and sets there. All men leave their towns and settle on its territory; the rivers of the sea pay homage in eels and fish, and bring the fruit of their tides. The dwellers in the town are in holiday attire every day; perfumed oil anoints their heads on new wigs. They stand at their doors, their hands filled with bouquets, with green boughs from the town of Pa-Hathor, with garlands from Pahir, at the entrance gate of Pharaoh. Joy increases and dwells there without end.”

Poetry, we see, flourished at the time of Ramses, and the manuscripts of the works have been preserved, but the names of the authors were not added.

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THE WAR-POEM OF PENTAUR

The most often quoted and the best-inspired poem is the Poem of Pentaur, which describes the exploits of Ramses in the year V at the battle of Kadesh. [Pentaur, or rather Pentauirit, is not the author, but merely the transcriber of the copy now in the British Museum. The author is not known.] We know the subject of the poem: the king, surprised by the prince of the Kheta, is obliged to lead the charge at the head of his household troops:

“His Majesty now rises like his father Mentu. He seizes his arms, and buckles on his cuirass like Baal in his time. Great horses bear on his Majesty—‘Victory to Thebes’ was their name as they left the stables of King Ramses, beloved of Amen. The king, having started, broke the ranks of the vile Kheta. He was alone, nobody with him. Having advanced in sight of those behind him, he was surrounded by two thousand five hundred chariots; cut off from retreat by all the warriors of the vile Kheta and by the numerous people with him from Arathu, Masa, and Pidasa. Each of their chariots carried three men, and they were all massed together. “‘No prince with me, no general, no officer of the archers, no archers, or chariots. My soldiers have forsaken me, my horsemen have fled, and not one remains to fight with me.’ Then his Majesty said:

“‘Where art thou, my father Amen? Does a father forget his son? Have I done anything without thee? Have I not marched and halted according to thy word? I have in no way disobeyed thy orders. He is very great, the lord of Egypt who overthrows the barbarians on his way! What are these Asiatics to thee? Amen enervates the impious. Have I not presented thee with numberless gifts? I have filled thy sacred dwelling with prisoners; I have built thee a temple which will last a million years; I have given all my goods for thy stores; I have offered thee the entire world to enrich thy domains. Truly a miserable fate is reserved to those who oppose thy designs, and happiness to him who knows thee, for thy acts come from a heart full of love. I invoke thee, my father Amen! Here I am in the midst of a great and strange company, all the nations are leagued against me, and I am alone, with no other but thee. My numerous soldiers have abandoned me, none of my horsemen regarded me when I called to them, they did not hearken to my voice. But I believe that Amen is more to me than a million horsemen, than a myriad brothers, or young sons all assembled together. The work of men is naught. Amen will overrule them. I have accomplished these things by the counsel of thy mouth, O Amen! and I have not transgressed thy counsels: here I have given glory to thee to the ends of the earth.’”

The king is here represented alone, surrounded by the enemy and in great danger, but his first impulse is to God; and before rushing into the mêlée, he makes this long address to Amen, and help came to him:

“The voice resounded to Hermonthis. Amen answers my cry; he gives me his hand, I utter a cry of joy, he speaks behind me:

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“‘I hasten to thee, to thee Ramses Meri-Amen, I am with thee. It is I, thy father; my hand is with thee and I am of more avail than hundreds of thousands. I am the lord of strength, a lover of courage, I have recognised a courageous heart and am satisfied my will will be done.’

“Like Mentu, I then cast my arrows to the right, I overthrew my enemies. I am like Baal before them. The two thousand five hundred chariots which surround me are dashed to pieces by my horsemen. Not one of them has a hand to fight with, their hearts fail them, and fear enfeebles their members. They cannot draw their arrows, nor have they strength to wield their lances. I precipitate them into the water as you would a crocodile, they are cast down on the top of each other. I do not wish one to look behind nor to turn back. He who falls will never regain his feet.”

The effect produced by this outburst about God was very great, especially on the Kheta, who seemed arrested by an invisible power when on the point of victory, and hesitated in terror. Then they commanded the chiefs in their cars, and the men versed in war to advance, so that the company of the kings of Arathu, of Ilion, of Lycia, Dardania, Carchemish, Kerkesh, Khilibu, numbering three thousand chariots, proceed forward.

“But all their efforts are useless. I dashed on them like Mentu, my hands destroyed them in the space of an instant, I cut and I killed amongst them, so that they said one to another:

“‘This is not a man amongst us, it is Sutekh, the great warrior. It is Baal in person. These are not the actions of a man that he does. Alone, all alone, he repulses hundreds of thousands without chiefs, and without soldiers. Let us hasten to fly before him, let us save our lives, let us breathe again.’

“All who came to fight found their hands weakened, they could no longer hold bows, or lance. Seeing that he had arrived at cross-roads the king pursued them like a griffin.”

It was only when the enemy is in retreat that he summons his soldiers, not so much for their aid as to let them witness his valour:

“Be firm, keep up your heart, O my soldiers! You see my victory and I was alone. It is Amen who gave me strength; his hand is with me.”

He encourages his shield-bearer Menna who is full of fear at the number of the enemy, and rushes into the mêlée.

“Six times I charged the enemy!”

At last his army arrives toward evening and helps him. He assembles his generals and overwhelms them with reproaches.

“What will the whole world say, when it learns that you left me quite alone? That not a charioteer nor any archers joined with me? I have fought, I have repulsed millions of people alone. ‘Victory of Thebes,’ and ‘Mut is satisfied’ were my glorious horses. It was with them that I was alone amid terrifying enemies. I will see them fed myself every day, when I am in my palace, for I had them when I was in the midst of my enemies with the chief Menna, my shield bearer, and with the officers of my horse who accompanied me, and are witnesses of the battle; they were with me. I have returned after a victorious battle and I have struck the assembled multitudes with my blade.”

The skirmish of the first day was only the preliminary to a more important engagement, and with what success to the Egyptians, and what loss to the Asiatics, has already been told. The poet does not give any details of this second affair. He describes it in a few lines dedicated entirely to praise of the king. The subject, in fact, is not the victory at Kadesh and the defeat[150] of the Syrian armies, important as these may be to the historian; but the poet sings the indomitable courage of Ramses, his faith in the aid of the gods, the irresistible strength of his arm. He wished to portray him surprised, abandoned, and compensating for the faults of the generals by his bravery. All the facts which could lessen the general impression or diminish the glory of the royal bravery are put in the background. The household troops are mentioned only once; of the second day of the battle there is but an insufficient description. The king of the Kheta implores peace, Ramses grants it, and returns in triumph to Thebes.

“Come, our beloved son, O Ramses Meri-Amen! The gods have given him infinite periods of eternity upon the double throne of his father Tmu, and all the nations are put under his feet.”b

THE KINGDOM OF THE KHETA AND THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY

After the preceding eulogy by Maspero, it is well to read Eduard Meyer’s more cynical account of the reign of the great Ramses. It will enable us the better to preserve a mental balance. It should not, however, lead us to forget that we are in the presence of one of the great epochs of civilisation; for all such great epochs have had their iconoclasts as well as their adulators.a

Ramses II exaggerated his own praises in inscriptions, saying that, already in the womb, he had been acknowledged king and that his father had handed him over the government when he was yet a child. This is correct in so far as he was solemnly proclaimed successor to the throne in his early youth, and probably raised to be co-regent by Seti toward the end of his reign; as crown-prince he accompanied his father in the wars against the Libyans.

In the fifth year the king directed his second campaign against the Kheta. The king of Kheta had summoned all his allies and tribes dependent on him, and a formidable army was gathered together in the neighbourhood of Kadesh. He almost succeeded in destroying, in an ambush, the advance-guard, in which Ramses was present. The mass of the army which had been called together in haste did not reach the battle-field in time, and it was only the personal courage of the king, who boasts of having fought against thousands alone when all deserted him, that gained the victory for the Egyptians. The enemy were driven into the Orontes, and suffered heavy losses; the king of Khilibu was almost drowned. Ramses II boasts again and again of this victory; he had the fight represented and poetically extolled in Luxor, in Karnak, in the Ramesseum built in the west town for the worship of the dead, and in Nubia in the temple of Abu Simbel. Nevertheless, it was only a brave personal feat and no great military success.

We hear nothing of the conquest of Kadesh, and when Ramses asserts “that the king of Kheta turned his hands to worship him,” this refers to passing negotiations or to an armistice, for we see that the war continued uninterruptedly.

We have only very incomplete information concerning the continuance of the war. Only once more do we find the king penetrating far toward the north: in the province of Tunep in the land of Naharain he personally fought against the Kheta. How he arrived so far north, we do not know.

It is clear that the Egyptians were being more and more driven back, and finally completely lamed. Doubtless the king of Kheta could boast of numerous victories. On the other hand, it was only boasting when Ramses gave long lists of conquered people and towns in his temple inscriptions,[151] in which, so as to equal Tehutimes III, he had to include the names of Asshur and Sangara, Mannus and Karak (Cilicia), with which the king scarcely came into contact. It can at once be seen that it is no historical document.

When and on what conditions peace was concluded is not known, and tradition does not relate what part of Syria the Egyptians maintained. At any rate Palestine remained essentially Egyptian. It would appear that it was agreed that South Syria should be relinquished to Egypt, and that the Kheta should retain a free hand in the North.

By this agreement, there was maintained between the two states a lasting peace which soon ripened into a close union. In the twenty-first year of Ramses II King Kheta-sar proposed one of those everlasting treaties to the Pharaoh, in which both states guaranteed their own integrity, formed an alliance for protection against every outside enemy, and mutually bound themselves to watch over all exiles who might seek refuge with them, and to surrender all deserters and emigrants. The treaty held good for a long time; thirteen years later Kheta-sar visited the ruler of Egypt and gave him his daughter to wife. Then took place what, as the god Ptah says to Ramses, “was unheard of even from the days of Ra until thine own.” It is evident that under such circumstances the relations of culture between Egypt and Syria must have been active and manifold.

The powerful influence which Egypt had exercised over the East has already been depicted in connection with this; and, for example, when we find that the characteristics of an Egyptian legend recorded under the successor of Ramses are taken up by the Hebrews and transferred to the hero of their race, Joseph, this is only one feature more added to the many we know.

But in Egypt we also find the worship of Syrian divinities spreading more and more—at the same time Set-Sutekh, the powerful patron god of the stranger who gave the enemy victory, was greatly respected.

Syrian names are considerably met with, and, above all, the language is most strikingly influenced by the Canaanite. In many documents Semitic words were almost used to the same extent as French in German literature of the eighteenth century.

After having concluded the treaty with Kheta-sar, Ramses II ruled over Egypt for forty-six years more in peace.

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This epoch, the time of Seti I and Ramses II, has rightly been called the prime of the New Theban Kingdom. The martial successes in its first half, the peaceful and well-ordered relations of the ensuing time, made the universal development of the land’s resources feasible to the government, and assured the subjects a comfortable enjoyment of life, such as the Egyptians of old loved.

Of no other period of Egypt do we possess so many monuments—temples, tombs, dedications, and inscriptions concerning victories—and so many literary remains. But nowhere does the typical character which adheres to the new Egyptian appear more prominently than here.

The type is supreme over all, and there is no question of individuality anywhere. It is in vain that we seek for a new thought or an original turn in the temple inscriptions, in the hymns on the king written on the face of the rocks or on papyrus, and in the appeals to the divinities. Frequently all tangible import is wanting. Everything is a copy and is carefully worked out from a fixed model; it has often been remarked how greatly the historical value of the reports has suffered through this. In value they are far below those of the time of Tehutimes III.

The administration of the land in the new kingdom does not differ much from that of the former one. The king appears to us surrounded by the entire fulness of divine glory; in the official reports his counsellors are only assembled so as to marvel at his superhuman wisdom, or else to be reproached for their want of foresight.

The further we advance into the history of Egypt, the more does the self-conceit and absurdity of the glorification of the king increase; under the reign of Ramses II one often gets the impression that he considered himself a superhuman being standing in direct communication with the gods. Like Amenhotep III, we often find him in the Nubian temples too, worshipping his own person, which is seated between Amen and Mut, or Khnem and Anuqat. The intention may have been to raise the reigning king—as formerly Usertsen III—to be territorial god of the subjected Cushites.

The residence of Ramses II was generally at Tanis, which he had newly constructed and adorned with numerous monuments, and which now received the name of “the town of Ramses.” The writers of the time are never tired of praising the glories of this city, which was a seaport as well as an important emporium. On account of its numerous relations with Syria, it is only natural that the centre of gravity of the kingdom should have been transferred here, and that many new foundations should have originated on the eastern frontier of Egypt. The frontier defences of Egypt proper against the tribes of the desert, were always kept up and sharply watched. As formerly, Thebes remained the real capital of the land; next to it, Memphis asserted its long-inherited right as the oldest residence and as dwelling-place of Ptah, the Father of the Divinities. The numerous private monuments bear witness to the well-being of the land more than the buildings, as also, to a certain degree, do the rhetorical descriptions of the writers.

Numerous admirable experiments in sculpture have come down to us, above all the likeness of Ramses II preserved in Turin. The marvellous and careful work of the relief in the temple of Seti I at Abydos has already been mentioned; a certain grandeur must not be denied to the composition of the great war picture which represents the events of the Kheta war in the year V of Ramses II,—the mustering of the troops, the life in camp, the advance of the enemy, and the battle of Kadesh. The king had the picture[153] carried out in coloured relief three times, in the Ramesseum, in Luxor, and in Abu Simbel. Besides these, there are also numerous examples of every kind of art-work, even to the simplest steles, often very roughly worked.

Some things have come to us of the literature of the times; chiefly the poem which Ramses II had composed and written on the walls of the temples to commemorate his battle with the Kheta. It is a work which, in spite of its official character, is not wanting in life and poetry.

There are also many narratives, such as the celebrated tale of the two brothers, written under Meneptah. Above all, there are the numerous epistles, rhetorical studies, descriptions of the power of the king and his works, the praise of learning, hymns, moral exhortations, also unmeaning letters which evidently served as models for real letters and reports. Besides these collections, we have also many authentic letters, reports, acts, etc., which give us much information concerning the life and doings of the Egyptians in the thirteenth century B.C.

If we cast an eye on the religious life, we clearly recognise that we are here dealing with an epoch in which heretic endeavours are completely suppressed, and orthodoxy asserts its unconditional sway. The religious literature of the time became characterised fairly early. At every turn we meet with the formulas of the victorious esoteric doctrine. The numerous temples show the increase of the power of the priests. All natural relations were restrained and stifled by religion. War was carried on by order, and in the name of, Amen, so as to increase his subjects and to bring him in rich booty. The inscriptions relate very little concerning the actions of the kings, but a great deal concerning the conversations which they had with the deities, and how they “cast all lands at their feet.” The eldest son of Ramses II, Khamuas, became high priest of Ptah in Memphis, and carefully looked after the worship of the sacred Apis: he caused the celebrated tombs of Apis, the Serapeum of Memphis, to be built. By those who came after, he was looked on as a great philosopher and magician.

It is known to us that, as a long established custom, the officials as a rule held one or more priesthoods besides their state office; naturally, higher education and, above all, instruction in writing and learning, were entirely in the hands of the priests. We meet with the enervating effects of these conditions throughout the whole course of Egyptian history.

When the intellectual life becomes torpid, physical strength also disappears. Since everything that constitutes nationality is converted into outer forms, a nation loses even the vitality and power necessary to maintain an independent existence.c

DEATH OF RAMSES II

Thus, somewhat frigidly, Eduard Meyer has summed up the achievements of the great Ramses. The words of Brugsch make a good epilogue.

Ramses II enjoyed a long reign. The monuments expressly testify to a reign of sixty-seven years’ duration, of which, apparently, more than half should be reckoned to his rule conjointly with his father. The jubilee celebration of his thirtieth year as (sole?) Pharaoh gave occasion for great festivities throughout the country, of which the inscriptions in Silsilis, El-Kab, Biggeh, Sehel, and even on several scarabs, make frequent mention. The prince and high priest of Memphis, Khamuas, journeyed through the chief cities of the country in this connection, that he might have the great and joyful festival in honour of his father prepared in a worthy fashion by[154] the different governors. The anniversary of the festival was calculated according to a fixed cycle, and apparently fell when the lunar and solar years coincided at short intervals of three or four years. It was observed as a solemn feast.

Great in the field, active in works of peace, Ramses appears to have also tasted heaven’s richest blessings in his family life. The outer surface of the front of the temple of Abydos reveals to us the portraits and the names, now only partially preserved, of 119 children (59 sons and 60 daughters), which besides the lawful consorts known to us, the favourite wife Isinefer, mother of Khamaus, the queens Nefert-ari, Meri-mut, and the daughter of the king of Kheta, implies a large number of inferior wives.

It is scarcely probable that the great Ramses departed this life leaving his earthly kingdom in a peaceful condition. Already in his old age a numerous progeny of sons and grandsons were disputing over their father’s inheritance. The seed of periods of storm and unrest was laid. According to historical tradition these bearings were confirmed in the most striking manner by subsequent events.

The body of Pharaoh was consigned to its death chamber in the rocky valley of Biban-el-Moluk. In spite of the large number of his children, Seti’s grateful son had left no offspring behind him who would have prepared a tomb for his father worthy of his deeds and of his name; a tomb which might if only in some degree have approached the dignity of Seti’s noble funeral vaults. The tomb of Ramses is an insignificant, rather tasteless erection, seldom visited by travellers to the Nile Valley, who probably scarcely suspect that the great Sesostris of Greek story has found his last resting-place in this modest place. This Pharaoh might have repeated of himself at his death, as formerly in his struggle against the Kheta he said, “I stood alone; none other was with me.”d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER VI. THE FINDING OF THE ROYAL MUMMIES

Nothing in modern discovery has more vividly and suddenly brought the ancient world home to the world of to-day than the finding of the actual bodies, the very flesh and blood of the Pharaohs marvellously preserved to us by the embalmer’s venerable art. The discovery has bridged the chasm between the Ancient and the New as a midnight flash of lightning from the clouds to the earth.

As so often happens, what had foiled the eager search of the patient scholar, had not eluded the cupidity of the thief. The appearance of royal mummies and priceless manuscripts on the open market filled the explorers with both chagrin and zeal. M. Maspero tells of the various wiles by which influential politicians of the Orient concealed their rich treasure-sources, and of the almost endless difficulties overcome by the European explorers before the thieves could be first deprived of their influence with the authorities, and then of their discoveries. These latter the scholars wished to examine and study where found, and then distribute them among museums for the benefit of other scholars and for public enlightenment. The real discoverers, the Arabs, were after loot alone, and mingled ruthlessness, lies, misrepresentations, and all manner of duplicity with their thrift. It is not here fitting to tell the story of the fight between scholarship and commerce; but the account of the revelation of the treasure-chamber itself is as appropriate as it is thrilling.a

On Wednesday, the 6th of July, 1879, Messrs. Emil Brugsch and Ahmad Effendi Kamal were conducted by Muhammed Ahmed Abd-er-Rassul to the entrance of the funeral vault itself.

The Egyptian engineer who long ago hollowed out the secret chamber had made his arrangements in the most ingenious fashion. Never was secret chamber better disguised. The chain of hills which at the spot divides the Biban-el-Moluk from the Theban plain, forms, between the Assassif and the Valley of the Queens, a series of natural amphitheatres, of which the best known was, up to the[156] present, that on which stands the monument of Deir-el-Bahari. In the wall of rocks which separates Deir-el-Bahari from the succeeding amphitheatres, just behind the knoll of Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah, about two hundred feet above the level of the cultivated lands, a pit was dug forty feet in depth by six in breadth. At the bottom of the pit, in the western side, was cut the entrance of a corridor four and a half feet wide by nearly three in height. After running a length of about twenty-five feet, it turns abruptly to the north, and extends to a distance of two hundred feet, not always keeping to the same dimensions; in certain parts it is about six and a half feet wide, in others little more than four. Near the centre five or six roughly hewn steps indicate a sensible change in the level, and on the right hand a sort of unfinished niche shows that there had been an idea of once more changing the direction of the gallery. The latter at last emerges into a kind of irregular, oblong chamber, about twenty-five feet in length.

The first object which struck the eye of Herr Brugsch, when he reached the bottom of the pit, was a white and yellow coffin, with the name of Nesi-Khonsu. It was in the corridor, about two feet from the entrance; a little further was a coffin whose form recalled the style of the XVIIth Dynasty; then Queen TiuHathor Hont-tui, then Seti I. Alongside the coffins and strewing the ground, were boxes of funeral statuettes, canopic vases,[7] bronze libation vases, and right at the back, in the angle formed by the corridor as it turns north, the funeral canopy of Queen Isiem-kheb, folded and crumpled like a worthless object which some priest in a hurry to get away had thrown carelessly in a corner. All along the great corridor was the same confusion and disorder; it was necessary to crawl along without knowing where hands and knees were being placed.

The coffins and mummies, hastily scanned by the light of a candle, bore historic names—Amenhotep I, Tehutimes II, in the niche near the staircase, Aahmes I, and his son Se-Amen, Seqenen-Ra, Queens Aah-hotep, Aahmes, Nefert-ari, and others. In the chamber at the end, the confusion was at its height, but the predominance of the style proper to the XXth Dynasty was recognised at a glance. The report of Muhammed Ahmad Abd-er-Rassul, which had at first appeared exaggerated, was scarcely more than the attenuated expression of the truth: where I had expected to come on one or two obscure, petty kings, the Arabs had unearthed a whole hypogee of Pharaohs.

And what Pharaohs! perhaps the most illustrious in the history of Egypt—Tehutimes III and Seti I, Aahmes the liberator and Ramses II the conqueror!

Two hours sufficed for this first examination, and then the work of removal began. Three hundred Arabs were speedily collected by the efforts of the mudir’s people, and set about the work. The museum’s boat, hastily summoned,[157] had not yet arrived; but reis Muhammed, one of the pilots on whom reliance could be placed, was on the spot. He descended to the bottom of the pit and undertook to extract its contents. Messrs. Brugsch and Ahmad Effendi Kamal received the objects as they were brought above ground, carried them to the foot of the hill, and ranged them side by side without relaxing their vigilance for a moment. Forty-eight hours of energetic labour sufficed to exhume everything; but the task was only half finished.

The convoy had to be conducted across the plain of Thebes and beyond the river as far as Luxor; several of the coffins, raised with great difficulty by twelve or sixteen men, took seven or eight hours to go from the mountain to the bank, and it will be easily imagined what this journey must have been like in the dust and heat of July.

At last, on the evening of the 11th, mummies and coffins were all at Luxor, duly enveloped in mats and canvases. Three days after, the museum’s steamer arrived; it only remained to load it, and it immediately started again for Bulaq with its freight of kings.

Then a singular thing happened, for from Luxor to Kuft, along either bank of the Nile, the fellah women followed the boat with dishevelled hair and uttering loud cries, and the men fired rifle-shots as they do at funerals.

HOW CAME THESE MONARCHS HERE?

And now a question arises. The greater number of the kings and princes of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, had each his tomb, which exists to-day or whose site we learn from ancient documents; Amenhotep I at Drah-abu’l-Neggah, Seti I and Ramses II at the Biban-el-Moluk, and others elsewhere. How is it that their corpses were hidden away between Deir-el-Bahari and Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah, huddled together with the corpses of the high priests of Amen? The Egyptians themselves have taken pains to furnish us with the materials for the answer. Several of the mummies or coffins which we possess, bear, written in ink by the hand of contemporary scribes, the date, the circumstances, and sometimes the reason of the transfer. These are veritable official reports, whose testimony on the subject is unimpeachable.

The three mummies of the XIXth Dynasty had a common fate. The coffins of Seti I and Ramses II bear three inscriptions, which are identical, or nearly so, and which date from three different periods: what is left of the coffin of Ramses II bears the remains of a hieratic text[8] analogous to the second inscription of the text of Seti I.

The two most ancient of these inscriptions mention Her-Hor. The first is conceived in these terms: “The year VI, of the 2nd month of Shaït the VII, the day of the expedition made by Her-Hor the … of the first Prophet of Amen Ra, king of the gods, to restore the funeral pomp of King Men-maat-Ra L. H. S. [life, health, strength] Son of the Sun, Seti Meneptah, through the inspector,” a name which is not very legible, as is also the case with those of his companions. The inscription which had been placed on the coffin of Ramses II has been rubbed out, and then written over. As it now reads, it suffices to show that it, like the preceding, was of the year VI and of the 2nd month of the season of Shaït, the VII; that the expedition had been undertaken by order of Her-Hor, and that its object was to ascertain the condition of the body of Ramses II. This interpretation of the date does not fail, however, to involve some difficulties. The name of[158] Her-Hor is not surrounded with the cartouche; and we may, if we choose, conclude from this fact that the mention of the year VI refers to the reign of the Ramesside whom Her-Hor succeeded on the throne. On the other hand, the comparison of this inscription with the following ones appears to me to prove that the date, year VI, should probably be placed to the count of the priest-king.

Indeed, no hesitation is possible in regard to the second inscription. It presents itself under two forms, of which one is found only on the coffin of Seti I, whilst the other is afforded us by the two coffins of Ramses I and Ramses II. The inscription of Seti I is conceived in these terms: “In the year XVI, of the 4th month of the season Pirt, the VII, under King Se-Amen, the day of the exhuming of the King Men-maat-Ra Seti Meri-en-Ptah L. H. S., from his tomb to bring him into the tomb of the lady An … of the great dwelling, by the prophet of Amen-Ra, king of the gods, the third prophet of Khonsumois Neferhotep, chief scribe of the monument of the temple of Amen-Ra, king of the gods, servant of the temple of Ramses II in the temple of Amen, Nesipkhashuti, son of Beken-Khonsu. The superior of the funeral hall had said in the presence (of the king) what was the condition (of the mummies) and that they had suffered no damage in being taken from the tomb where they were, and transported to the tomb of the lady An … of the great dwelling where King Amenhotep rests in peace.”

The inscription of Ramses II differs from the preceding only in the opening words: “In the year XVI, of the 4th month of Pirt, the VII, the day of the exhuming of King User-maat-Ra-sotep-en-Ra, the great god of the tomb of King Men-maat-Ra, Seti Miptah.” The rest is similar in every point to the text of Seti I.

The inscription of Ramses I is much mutilated; but what has been preserved permits us to restore a formula at the commencement, which is intermediary between the formula of Seti I and that of Ramses II. “(The year XVI, of the 4th month of Pirt, the VII, under) King Se-Amen, (day of) the exhuming of (the King Men-pehtet-Ra L. H. S.) from the (tomb of King Men-maat-Ra) Seti Miptah (to bring it into this tomb) of the lady An … of the (great) dwelling (where the King Amen) hotep (rests) in peace, etc.”

The three bodies, carried at different periods to Seti’s hypogee, were taken thence all three in one day. This identity in time explains why, in the second part of each inscription, the scribe has always made use of the plural number to express the condition of the mummy: he placed on each of the coffins the formula which applied to all three.

The other coffins of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties bear no inscriptions, but I have no doubt that at about the same time they were the object of frequent visits. One certain fact seems to me to result from the reports: by the close of the XXth Dynasty the bodies of Seti I, Ramses I, Ramses II, and Tehutimes I were no longer in their own tombs, and not yet in the hidden chamber where they were discovered: they were carried from place to place and their funerary appointments restored at fairly short intervals. What was the motive for so often taking the trouble to verify this condition?

The documents which have come down to us from the last kings of the XXth Dynasty give us some idea of an epoch of decadence. Egypt, exhausted by six centuries of conquest, no longer possessed the strength necessary to retain her dominion over the provinces in Syria, and was losing with them the best part of her revenue. The great towns of the Delta—Memphis,[159] Tanis, Saïs—standing on the natural highway of Asiatic commerce, did not suffer greatly from this political diminution of the country; but Thebes, which was situated in the interior, at a distance from the great commercial routes, and had owed the prosperity she enjoyed to conquest alone, grew poorer and rapidly declined. Constructive works were for the most part suspended for want of supplies; and the labouring population, ill-paid from the royal treasure, began to feel the pangs of hunger. Hence proceeded strikes and daily disorders, which the overseers of the workshops recorded in their note-books; and then pillage and theft.

Bands were organised, in which civil employees, officers, workmen, even women, figure indiscriminately, and these set to work to exploit the necropolis. They forced the doors of the tombs, that they might carry off the objects of value, the jewels, furniture, and gorgeous arms which the piety of relatives had deposited with the corpses.

Soon, not content with attacking private individuals, they ventured to lay their hands upon the kings. The government of Ramses made vain attempts to stop their depredations. An inquiry, opened in the XVIth year of Ramses IX, informs us that the king’s commissioners found one royal tomb violated for every ten that they were authorised to visit. It is curious that one of the hypogees examined belonged to a prince whose mummy we found in the secret chamber of Deir-el-Bahari, namely Amenhotep I; it was still intact.

The report of the opening of the tomb of Sebekhotep [VI] tells us in what the booty of the thieves consisted: “We opened the coffins of the king and his wife, Queen Nubkhas, as well as the funeral caskets in which they lay. We found the august mummy of the king, and beside it his sword, as well as a considerable number of talismans, and ornaments of gold about his neck. The head was covered with gold, and gold was scattered all over the mummy: the coffins were plated with gold and silver within and without, and incrusted with all kinds of stones. We took the gold which we found on the mummy, as well as the talisman and the ornaments of the neck and the gold of the coffins. We likewise took all we could find on the royal spouse, then we burned their funeral caskets and we robbed them of their furniture, which consisted of vases of gold or silver and of bronze, and we divided them among us in eight portions.” One might fancy he was reading the description of that mummy of Queen Aah-hop, whose jewels now form an ornament of the museum at Bulaq.

Let us now examine the condition of the coffins and mummies found at Deir-el-Bahari. Seqenen-Ra, Aahmes and his son Se-Amen, Nefert-ari, and Aah-hotep are certainly in their original coffins, as is proved by the style and the absence of inscriptions indicating a restoration. Amenhotep I and[160] Tehutimes II appear to have retained only the covers of their original coffins; the case is of wood, very roughly shaped, and in order to introduce the mummy of Tehutimes II, it has been found necessary to reduce the thickness of the sides at the level of the shoulders. The inscriptions assert that the wrappings have been renewed: this may have been as much because they were worn out in the natural course of things as because of the violence of human hands, and the restoration does not in itself prove that the mummy has suffered by thieves. But do not the two false mummies of Princess Meshent-themhu and the Princess Set-Amen furnish us with proof of a violation analogous to that to which King Sebekhotep and his wife Nubkhas were subjected?

The robbers, after breaking open Sebekhotep’s coffin, had dispersed the bones of the king, and the tomb was empty. Something similar must certainly have occurred in the case of the Princess Meshent-themhu. The coffin was broken open, and the inscription which it bore, inlaid with blue enamel, partly disappeared; for it was necessary, as I have shown above, to restore it roughly in ink. As for the bones, they had disappeared: probably the thieves, fearing they might be disturbed in their sacrilegious work, made haste to carry off the mummy with them; then abandoned it, once it had been despoiled, in some place where no one thought of looking for it. On the other hand, religion did not allow that the disembodied soul could enjoy a full existence in the other world if the body it had owned during its earthly life should completely disappear.

In default of the real body, the commissioners charged to inspect and restore the tombs adopted the plan of manufacturing the semblances of bodies for Seti and Meshent-themhu. A fragment of broken coffin simulated the bust of Meshent-themhu, a bundle of rags the head, another bundle of rags the feet, and the whole, duly encased in wrappings, was deposited in the coffin, which was more or less carefully restored. Was the soul satisfied at recognising the counterfeit body?

For my part I am very glad to have discovered, thanks to that pious fraud, the principal, if not the only, reason for the collection of so many royal mummies in one place.

It was to save the dead Pharaohs from thieves that it was decided to hide them away. It was hoped that a pit, thirty-eight yards deep, followed by a narrow corridor of two hundred and fifty feet, would protect them from profanation; and experience has proved that the reckoning was not so far out, since centuries rolled away from the day that they were deposited there, before that on which the Arabs of Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah discovered the hiding-place.

Some Egyptologists will, at first sight, be amazed at the rude character of this supposed tomb, and will object that it is a far cry from a chamber without ornament and roughly hollowed out of the rock, to the magnificent hypogees of Biban-el-Moluk. I answer that the difference between the tombs is not greater than the difference between the kings. Amenhotep III, Ramses II, even Ramses V and Her-Hor, reigned over all Egypt, over Ethiopia, over at least a part of Syria, and had command of the men and money needful to hew out and decorate immense syringes.[9]

Painet´-em II and the people of his family possessed only the poorest region of Egypt and Nubia: it was as much as they could do to secure their mummies the same burial as that of the wealthier men of their time. No more special monuments for each of the dead, but one common vault for[161] all; no more immense sarcophagi in hard stone, but mere coffins in polished wood, sometimes stolen from earlier kings or private persons. There is nothing which more clearly marks the decadence of Thebes than this increasing poverty of the last Theban kings.b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER VII. THE PERIOD OF DECAY
[XIXth-XXVth Dynasties: ca. 1285-655 B.C.]

After the summit, the inevitable decline. The first of world powers under the Ramessides, Egypt again becomes degenerate, and, after some five hundred years of reanimation, passes into the power of the priests, who in turn are supplanted by invading hosts, this time from Ethiopia. Then the Assyrian conquerors, taking their turn at world-domination, invade Egypt along the route which Tehutimes and Ramses had followed of old in invading Assyria. Dismembered Egypt falls an easy prey to Esarhaddon. It revolts under Asshurbanapal again and again, and is as often reconquered. But a mixed population of Ethiopians and Assyrians again gives a certain measure of new vitality to the old body, and, the destruction of the Assyrian empire having rid the Egyptians of one of their enemies, they were presently able, under Psamthek I (Psammetichus), to overthrow the Ethiopian “usurpers,” and establish once more a “native” dynasty.

For about three-quarters of a century Egypt retained autonomy, and even struggled back to a shadow of its old-time power, illustrating once again the vitality that resides in an old stock. Then the final coup was given by Cambyses the Persian; and the last contest was over. Taken by themselves, these long-drawn-out struggles of a dying nation—extending over half a thousand years—are full of interest; but in the comparative scale they are unimportant. We have seen the great nation at its flood-tide of power, and we need not dwell at very great length upon the time of its ebbing fortunes; for other nations, off to the east, have now taken the place of Egypt as the world-centres, and are beckoning attention.a

MENEPTAH

The disappearance of the old hero, Ramses II, did not produce many changes in the condition of affairs in Egypt. Meneptah from this time forth possessed as Pharaoh the power which he had previously wielded[163] as regent. He was now no longer young. Born somewhere about the beginning of the reign of Ramses II, he was now sixty, possibly seventy, years old; thus an old man succeeded another old man at a moment when Egypt must have needed more than ever an active and vigorous ruler. The danger to the country did not on this occasion rise from the side of Asia, for the relations of the Pharaoh with his Kharu [Phœnician] subjects continued friendly, and, during a famine which desolated Syria, he sent wheat to his Hittite allies.

The nations, however, to the north and east, in Libya and in the Mediterranean islands, had for some time past been in a restless condition, which boded little good to the empires of the Old World. The Tamahu, some of them tributaries from the XIIth, and others from the first years of the XVIIIth Dynasty, had always been troublesome, but never really dangerous neighbours. From time to time it was necessary to send light troops against them, who, sailing along the coast or following the caravan routes, would enter their territory, force them from their retreats, destroy their palm groves, carry off their cattle, and place garrisons in the principal oases—even in Siwa itself. For more than a century, however, it would seem that more active and numerically stronger populations had entered upon the stage. A current of invasion, having its origin in the region of the Atlas, or possibly even in Europe, was setting toward the Nile, forcing before it the scattered tribes of the Sudan.

Who were these invaders? Were they connected with the race which had planted its dolmens over the plains of the Maghreb? Whatever the answer to this question may be, we know that a certain number of Berber tribes—the Libu and Mashauasha—who had occupied a middle position between Egypt and the people behind them, and who had only irregular communications with the Nile Valley, were now pushed to the front and forced to descend upon it.

The Libu might very well have gained the mastery over the other inhabitants of the desert at this period, who had become enfeebled by the frequent defeats which they had sustained at the hands of the Egyptians. At the moment when Meneptah ascended the throne, their king, Marajui, son of Did, ruled over immense territory.

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A great kingdom had risen capable of disturbing Egyptian control. The danger was serious. The Hittites, separated from the Nile by the broad breadth of Phœnicia, could not directly threaten any of the Egyptian cities: but the Libyans, lords of the desert, were in contact with the Delta, and could in a few days fall upon any point in the valley they chose. Meneptah, therefore, hastened to resist the assault of the Westerners, as his father had formerly done that of the Easterners; and, strange as it may seem, he found among the troops of his new enemies some of the adversaries with whom the Egyptians had fought under the walls of Kadesh sixty years before. The Shardana, Lycians, and others, having left the coasts of the Delta and the Phœnician seaports, owing to the vigilant watch kept by the Egyptians over their waters, had betaken themselves to the Libyan littoral, where they met with a favourable reception. Whether they had settled in some places, and formed there those colonies of which a Greek tradition of a more recent age speaks, we cannot say. They certainly followed the occupation of mercenary soldiers, and many of them hired out their services to the native princes, while others were enrolled among the troops of the king of Kheta or of the Pharaoh himself. Marajui brought with him Achæans, [Aqauasha], Shardana, Turisha, Shakalisha, and Lycians in considerable numbers when he resolved to begin the strife.

This was not one of those conventional little wars which aimed at nothing further than the imposition of the payment of a tribute upon the conquered, or the conquest of one of their provinces. Marajui had nothing less in view than the transport of his whole people into the Nile Valley, to settle permanently there as the Hyksos had done before him. He set out on his march toward the end of the fourth year of the Pharaoh’s reign, or the beginning of his fifth, surrounded by the élite of his troops, “the first choice from among all the soldiers and all the heroes in each land.” The announcement of their approach spread terror among the Egyptians. The peace which they enjoyed for fifty years had cooled their warlike ardour, and the machinery of their military organisation had become somewhat rusty. The standing army had almost melted away; the regiments of archers and charioteers were no longer effective, and the neglected fortresses were not strong enough to protect the frontier.

As a consequence, the oases of Farafrah and of the Natron lakes fell into the hands of the enemy at the first attack, and the western provinces of the Delta became the possession of the invader before any steps could be taken for their defence. Memphis, which realised the imminent danger, broke out into open murmurs against the negligent rulers who had given no heed to the country’s ramparts, and had allowed the garrisons of its fortresses to dwindle away. Fortunately Syria remained quiet. The Kheta, in return for the aid afforded them by Meneptah during the famine, observed a friendly attitude, and the Pharaoh was thus enabled to withdraw the troops from his Asiatic provinces. He could with perfect security take the necessary measures for insuring “Heliopolis, the city of Tmu,” against surprise, “for arming Memphis, the citadel of Ptah-Tanen, and for restoring all things which were in disorder; he fortified Pa-Bailos (Bilbeis), in the neighbourhood of the Shakana canal, on a branch of that of Heliopolis;” and he rapidly concentrated his forces behind these quickly organised lines. Marajui, however, continued to advance; in the early months of the summer he had crossed the Canopic branch of the Nile, and was now about to encamp not far from the town of Pa-Arshop (Proposis).

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The Pharaoh did not stir from his position. Marajui had, in the meantime, arranged his attack for the 1st of Epiphi, at the rising of the sun: it did not take place however until the 3rd. “The archers of his Majesty made havoc of the barbarians for six hours; they were cut off by the edge of the sword.”

When Marajui saw the carnage, “his heart failed him; he betook himself to flight as fast as his feet could bear him to save his life, so successfully that his bow and arrows remained behind him in his precipitation, as well as everything else he had upon him.” His treasure, his arms, his wife, together with the cattle which he had brought with him for his use, became the prey of the conqueror; “he tore out the feathers from his head-dress, and took flight with such of those wretched Libyans as escaped the massacre, but the officers who had the care of his Majesty’s team of horses followed in their steps” and put most of them to the sword. Marajui succeeded, however, in escaping in the darkness, and regained his own country without water or provisions, and almost without escort. The conquering troops returned to the camp laden with booty, and driving before them asses carrying, as bloody tokens of victory, quantities of hands and phalli cut from the dead bodies of the slain. The bodies of six generals and of 6359 Libyan soldiers were found upon the field of battle, together with 222 Shakalisha, 724 Turisha, and some hundreds of Shardana and Aqauasha [Achæans]; several thousands of prisoners passed in procession before the Pharaoh, and were distributed among such of his soldiers as had distinguished themselves.

Meneptah lived for some time after this memorable year V, and the number of monuments which belong to this period shows that he reigned in peace. We can see that he carried out works in the same places as his father before him—at Tanis as well as Thebes, in Nubia as well as in the Delta. He worked the sandstone quarries for his building materials, and continued the custom of celebrating the feasts of the Inundation, at Silsilis. One at least of the steles which he set up on the occasion of these feasts is really a chapel, with its architraves and columns, and still excites the admiration of the traveller on account both of its form and of its picturesque appearance. The last years of his life were troubled by the intrigues of princes who aspired to the throne, and by the ambition of the ministers to whom he was obliged to delegate his authority. One of the latter, a man of Semite origin, named Ben-Azana, of Zor-bisana, who had assumed the appellation of his first patron Ramses-uparna-Ra, appears to have acted for him as regent. [Chronological reasons demand that we place the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt in the reign of this Pharaoh.]

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Meneptah was succeeded, apparently, by one of his sons, called Seti, after his great-grandfather. Seti II had doubtless reached middle age at the time of his accession, but his portraits represent him, nevertheless, with the face and figure of a young man. The expression in these is gentle, refined, haughty, and somewhat melancholy. It is the type of Seti I and Ramses II, but enfeebled and, as it were, saddened. An inscription of his second year attributes to him victories in Asia, but others of the same period indicate the existence of disturbances similar to those which had troubled the last years of his father. Seti died, it would seem, without having time to finish his tomb. We do not know whether he left any legitimate children, but two sovereigns succeeded him who were not directly connected with him, but were probably the grandsons of the Amenmes and the Siptah, whom we meet with among the children of Ramses.

The first of these was also called Amenmes, and he held sway for several years over the whole of Egypt, and over its foreign possessions. The second, who was named Siptah-Meneptah, ascended “the throne of his father,” thanks to the devotion of his minister, Bi, but in a greater degree to his marriage with a certain princess called Ta-user. He maintained himself in this position for at least six years, during which he made an expedition into Ethiopia, and received in audience at Thebes messengers from all foreign nations. He kept up so zealously the appearance of universal dominion that to judge from his inscriptions he must have been the equal of the most powerful of his predecessors at Thebes. Egypt, nevertheless, was proceeding at a quick pace toward its downfall. No sooner had this monarch disappeared than it began to break up.

As in the case of the Egyptians of the Greek period, we can see only through a fog what took place after the deaths of Meneptah and Seti II. We know only for certain that the chiefs of the nomes were in perpetual strife with each other, and that a foreign power was dominant in the country as in the time of Apophis. The days of the kingdom would have been numbered if a deliverer had not promptly made his appearance. The direct line of Ramses II was extinct, but his innumerable sons by innumerable concubines had left a posterity out of which some at least might have the requisite ability and zeal, if not to save the empire, at least to lengthen its duration, and once more give to Thebes days of glorious prosperity.

Egypt had set out some five centuries before this for the conquest of the world, and fortune had at first smiled upon her enterprise. Tehutimes I, Tehutimes III, and the several Pharaohs bearing the name of Amenhotep, had marched with their armies from the upper waters of the Nile to the banks of the Euphrates, and no power had been able to withstand them. New nations, however, soon rose up to oppose her, and the Hittites in Asia and the Libyans of the Sudan together curbed her ambition. Neither the triumphs of Ramses II nor the victory of Meneptah had been able to restore her prestige, or the lands of which her rivals had robbed her beyond her ancient frontier. Now her own territory itself was threatened, and her own well-being was in question; she was compelled to consider, not how to rule other tribes, great or small, but how to keep her own possessions intact and independent; in short, her very existence was at stake.b

FROM SETNEKHT TO RAMSES VIII AND MERI-AMEN MERI-TMU

In the midst of the unsettled state of affairs a new dynasty arose under the leadership of Setnekht, a descendant of Ramses II and governor of[167] Thebes, who with some difficulty succeeded in quelling the rebels and subjugating the Syrian Arisu. “He was like the gods Kheper and Sutekh in his energy, repairing the state of disorder of the whole country, killing the barbarians who were in the Delta, and purifying the great realm of Egypt. He was regent of the two countries on the throne of Tmu (the chief god of Heliopolis) devoting himself so well to the reorganisation of what had been upset, that each one found a brother in every one of those from whom they had been so long separated; and re-establishing the temples and sacrifices so well that the traditional homage was rendered to the divine cycles.”

His son, Ramses III, who had been his co-regent, was the last of the great sovereigns of Egypt. His ambition during the thirty-two years of his reign was to follow in the steps of his namesake, Ramses the Great, in re-establishing the integrity of the empire abroad, and the prosperity of the country at home. But in spite of his father’s successful warfare, the Syrian provinces were lost, and the frontiers encroached upon. On the east, the Bedouins attacked the fortified ports of the Delta, and the mining colonies of Sinai; on the west, the nations of Libya had invaded the Nile. Led by their chiefs Did (probably the son of Marajui, the contemporary of Meneptah), Mashaknu, Zamar, and Zautmar, the Tuhennu, the Tamahu, the Kahaka, and their neighbours, left the sandy plains of the desert and conquered the Mareotic nome or district of the Saïd, at the mouth of the Nile, as far as the great arm of the river, in short all the western part of the Delta from the town of Karbria on the west to the outskirts of Memphis on the south.

After repulsing the Bedouins, Ramses III turned his arms against the Libyans in the year V and completely conquered them. “They were as terrified as goats attacked by a bull, that tramples with his foot, strikes with his horns, and makes the mountains tremble in his rush upon those that approach him.” The raids of the barbarians had exasperated the Egyptians, they gave no quarter; the Libyans fled in disorder, and some of their tribes, lingering in the Delta, were taken off and incorporated in the auxiliary army.

Scarcely was this trouble over when Ramses attacked Syria. Whilst Egypt was being ruined with civil wars, her old enemy, the Kheta, made[168] her lose the rest of her empire. The nations of Asia Minor, continually pushed forward by the arrival of new races, had left their homes and penetrated into the distant regions of Syria and Egypt, attracted by reports of the riches of those countries; the Danau, the Tyrians, the Shakalisha, the Teucrians, who had succeeded the Dardani in the hegemony of the Trojan nations, and the Lycians and the Philistines joined the confederation. Those on the ships attacked the coasts, and the others crossed Syria and laid siege to the fortresses of the isthmus. With forces increased by the people they subjugated on the way, they penetrated Cilicia, forced the Kati and Kheta [Hittites] to follow them, picked up the contingent of Carchemish, Arathu, and Kadesh, and after staying some time in the environs of this town in the country of the Amorites, pushed straight on to Egypt.

But prompt as this action had been, Ramses was quite prepared to meet it. After having armed the mouth of the Nile and the places of the Delta, he started to oppose the enemy. The encounter of the two armies and the two fleets took place in the year VIII between Raphia and Pelusium under the walls of the castle, called the Tower of Ramses III.

“The mouth of the river was like a mighty wall of ships and vessels of every kind, filled from prow to poop with brave armed men. The infantry soldiers, the picked men of the army of Egypt, were there like roaring lions on the mountains; the charioteers, chosen from the swiftest of heroes, were led by every kind of experienced officers; the horses trembled in every limb and longed to trample nations under foot.

“As for me,” says Ramses, “I was like Mentu, the warlike. I rose before them and they saw the work of my hands. I, the King Ramses, I have acted like a hero, who knows his valour and who stretches his arm over his people in the day of the struggle. Those who have violated frontiers will no longer cultivate the land, the time for their souls to pass into eternity is fixed. Those who were upon the shore were prostrated on the banks of the water, massacred as in a charnel house. I destroyed their vessels, and their goods were swallowed up by the waters.”

Prompt as this victory was, it did not conclude the wars of Ramses III. The Libyans, the old allies of the maritime races, would gladly have joined against Egypt in the year VIII; and if they did not do so, it was doubtless because they had not had time to repair their losses. As soon as they were ready, they reappeared upon the scene, and in the year XI the chief Kapur and his son Mashashal led the Mashauasha [Maxyes], the Sabita, the Kaikasha and other less important tribes, aided by the people of Tyre and Lycia, to the invasion of the Delta.

“For the second time their hearts told them that they would pass their lives in the nomes of Egypt, and that they would till the valleys and plains like their own land.”

But the attempt did not meet with success. “Death came upon them in Egypt for they had run with their own feet to the furnace, which consumes corruption, to the fire of the bravery of the king which descends like Baal from the heights of the skies! All his members are imbued with victorious strength. With his right hand he seizes multitudes; his left extends like arrows over those before him to destroy them; his sword-blade is as sharp as that of his father, Mentu. Kapur, who had come to demand homage, blinded by fear, cast his arms from him and his troops did likewise: he raised a supplicating cry to Heaven and his son supported his arms. But lo, there stood by him the god, who knew his most secret thoughts.

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“His Majesty fell upon their heads like a mountain of granite, he crushed them and watered the earth with their blood, their army and their soldiers were massacred … they were taken, they were struck, their arms were tied, and like birds, imprisoned in the hold of a ship, they were in the power of his Majesty. The king was like Mentu, his victorious feet trampled on the heads of the enemy; the chiefs who opposed him were struck and held by the wrists.”

So the Libyans were careful henceforth not to disturb the peace of Egypt.

The victories of these twelve years healed the wounds of the preceding period. A voyage of the fleet along the coasts made the ancient Syrian provinces return to their allegiance and the allied nations of the Kheta [Hittites], of Carchemish and of the Kati, seeing the subjugation of the maritime people, soon followed suit. A second maritime expedition was directed against Arabia.

“I equipped vessels and galleys, armed with numerous sailors and workmen. The captains of the maritime auxiliary forces were there with overseers and managers to provision the ships with the countless products of Egypt. There were tens of thousands of every kind passing through the great sea of Kati. They arrived at the country of the Punt without any misadventure, and prepared to load the galleys and vessels with the products of Tonutir, with all the mysterious wonders of the country, and with considerable quantities of the perfumes of Punt. Their sons, the chiefs of the Tonutir came themselves to Egypt bringing tribute; they came safe and sound to the country of Coptos and landed in the country with their riches. They brought them in caravans of asses and men, and embarked them on the river at the port of Coptos.”

Other expeditions to the peninsula of Sinai restored the mining districts to the possession of Pharaoh. So the Egyptian empire was reconstituted as it was in the preceding century in the time of Ramses II. The Shardana, Tyrians, Lycians, and Trojans no longer landed en masse on the coasts of Africa.

The tide of Asiatic emigration now turned from the valley of the Nile, which had been its direction for the last one hundred and fifty years, towards the west, and inundated Italy, at the same time that the Phœnician colonists arrived there. The Tyrians took the land at the north of the mouth of the Tiber, the Shardana occupied the large island, which later was called Sardinia, and soon nothing remained of them in Egypt but the recollection of their raids and the legendary recital of their migrations from the shores of the Archipelago to the coasts of the western Mediterranean.

The Philistines were the only people of the confederation allowed to settle in Syria, and they took root along the southern coast between Joppa and the river of Egypt, in the districts hitherto peopled by the Canaanites, and there they primarily lived under the yoke of Pharaoh. On the other frontier of the Delta, a Libyan tribe, called Mashauasha, likewise obtained a concession of territory, and the Mashauasha soldiers raised in Libya, from that portion of the tribe encamped on the bank of the Nile, formed a picked corps, the Ma, the leaders of which played a great part in the internal history of Egypt.

Herodotus relates that on the return of Sesostris (the name given by that historian to Ramses II) he was nearly killed by treachery. His brother, to whom he had intrusted the government during his absence, invited him and his children to a great feast; then he surrounded the house with wood and gave orders for it to be set alight. The king, learning this, immediately consulted[170] with his wife, who was with him, and she advised him to take two of their six children and lay them on the burning wood, so that they could use their bodies as a bridge by which to pass over. Sesostris did this, and thus burned two of his children, and the others were saved with the parents.

The monuments have proved that the Sesostris of this legend of Herodotus is not Ramses II but his namesake, Ramses III. One of the brothers of the king mentioned in official documents under the pseudonym of Pen-ta-ur conspired against him with a large number of courtiers and ladies of the harem, with the object of killing Pharaoh and putting his brother in his place. The plot was discovered, the conspirators cited before the tribunals and condemned, some to death and others to perpetual imprisonment.

The last years of the reign of Ramses III were passed in peace. He built at Thebes, in memory of his wars, the great palace of Medinet Habu; he enlarged Karnak and restored Luxor. The details of these pious works in the Delta have been preserved in a manuscript at the library of Heliopolis, the great Harris papyrus.

One sees by this document that Egypt not only regained her foreign empire, but her commercial and industrial activity. The prosperous days of Tehutimes III and Ramses II seemed to have returned.

Nevertheless, the decadence was at hand. Egypt, exhausted by four centuries of perpetual warfare, became more and more incapable of serious effort. The population decimated by recruiting, inefficiently replaced by the incessant introduction of foreign elements, had lost the patience and enthusiasm of early times. The upper classes, accustomed to comfort and riches, now only cared for the civil professions, and thought lightly of what was military.

THE SORROWS OF A SOLDIER

“Why do you say that an infantry officer is happier than a scribe?” asked a scribe of his pupil. “Let me describe to you the lot of an infantry officer, and the extent of his miseries. He is taken when quite a child and shut up in a barrack; a cutting sore forms on his stomach; a wearing pain is in his eye; an open wound is on his two eyebrows; his head is split and covered with matter. In short, he is beaten like a roll of papyrus, he is bruised by the pressure of arms. Come and let me tell you of his marches towards Syria and his campaigns in distant countries. His bread and his water are on his shoulder like an ass’s burden, and make the nape of his neck like that of an ass. The joints of his spine are broken; he drinks putrid water, then returns to his watch. If he reaches the enemy, he trembles like a goose, for he has no valour. If he end by returning to Egypt, he is like a tick consumed by the worm. If he be ill, what alleviation does he have? He is taken away on an ass; his clothes are carried off by robbers; his domestics flee from him. That is the foot-soldier, and the cavalry one is not much better treated. The scribe Amenonopit says to the scribe Penbisit: ‘When this written communication reaches thee, apply yourself to becoming a scribe, and you will rise in the world. Come, let me tell you of the fatiguing duties of a chariot officer:

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“‘When he is placed at school by his father and mother, he has to give away two of his slaves. After he dons his uniform, he goes to choose his horses in the stable. In the presence of his Majesty, he takes the good steeds and with shouts of joy wishes to bring them to the town at a gallop. But the horses will not go without a stick. Then, as he does not know what fate awaits him, he bequeaths all his goods to his father and mother. He goes off then with a chariot, but its pole weighs more than twice the weight of the chariot. So when he wishes to gallop with this chariot, he is forced to get down and pull it. He does so, falls on to a reptile, slips into the brushwood, his legs are bitten by the reptile, his heel is pierced by the bite, his misery is extreme. He lies on the ground and receives a hundred blows.’”

And these lines were written in the reign of Ramses II to the sound of songs of triumph, when the populace were full of enthusiasm for victory, and followed the triumphal chariot of Pharaoh with acclamations of delight. The first intoxication over, the lower classes, exhausted by centuries of incessant warfare, crushed under the weight of tributes and taxes, lapsed into their normal depression, the literature turned the sufferings of the soldiers into ridicule. This weariness of success, this disgust for the bloody, dearly bought victories, explains some obscure points in the history of Egypt, and casts great light on the rapid fall of the edifice so laboriously raised by the princes of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties. The Egypt of Tehutimes III wished for war; the Egypt of Ramses III wished for peace at any price.

This was especially seen to be the case in the course of the XXth Dynasty. In the year XXXII, Ramses, tired of government, called his son Ramses IV to share it. He died two years later, and Ramses IV, after a reign of not more than three or four years, was followed by a distant relation who was Ramses V. Then came the four sons of Ramses III: Ramses VI, Ramses VII, Ramses VIII, and Meri-Amen Meri-Tmu, who succeeded each other rapidly on the throne. These Ramses made some expeditions here and there, but never great wars. They passed their days in peace abroad, and peace at home, and if it be true that people are happy who have no history, Egypt was very happy under their rule.

No more constant struggles, no more distant marches to the mountains of Cilicia and to the plains of the Upper Nile. Syria continued to pay tribute for some time; for if Egypt, exhausted by victory, had scarcely the strength to enforce obedience, Syria was exhausted with defeat, and had no more strength to revolt. But there was this difference between the two countries, the one bordered on old age and never revived, while the other soon rallied from its reverses. The kingdom of Egypt died of exhaustion in full prosperity.c

EGYPT UNDER THE DOMINION OF MERCENARIES

The first sign of weakness in an empire seems to be scented. Egypt, decaying within, attracted speedy attention from the ambitious, who turned greedy eyes towards her hoarded wealth.

After the death of Ramses III, Egypt had ceased to exercise any influence upon Syria. A time of increasing inaction and stagnation had set in for Egypt, which at last led to Her-Hor, the Theban high priest, being placed upon the throne. How long Her-Hor ruled over Egypt, we know not, but we see that his son Piankhi and his grandson Painet´em I did not have royal power but only succeeded their father as high priests, and, as such, had uncontrolled power in Thebes and its environs.

Another ruling house of foreign (Libyan) origin arose at this time in Tanis. King Se-Amen (according to Manetho, Smendes) was its chief. His name is seen on the walls of a temple at Tanis, and upon an obelisk of Heliopolis. He also reigned over Thebes. In the sixteenth year of his reign he had the mummies of Ramses I, Seti I, and Ramses II examined and put in another tomb. He evidently overthrew the dominion of the Theban high priests and forced them to recognise his power.

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Thereupon Painet´em I added the title of provost (of Thebes) and commander-in-chief of the South and North, to his dignity of high priest, evidently taking, with the Tanitic kings, a position similar to that of Her-Hor with Ramses XII. Se-Amen’s son, Pasebkhanu (Greek, Psousennes), seems to have gone a step farther; he overcame the party of the Theban priests, and gave the office of chief priest to one of his sons, who, like the grandson of Her-Hor, had, or took, the name of Painet´em II. A few short reigns, among which were those of the Amenemapt, also recognised in Thebes, seem to have followed that of Pasebkhanu I; and then Painet´em ascended the throne.

As “high priest of Amen” at Thebes, and commander-in-chief, he invested his sons Masaherta and Men-kheper-Ra and then Painet´em (III), the son of the latter, with power; and Hor-Pasebkhanu II seems to have succeeded him in Tanis. The rule of the Tanites seems to have lasted about 120 years (from about 1060 to 943 B.C.).

The kingdom, or at all events the part of the country governed by the priests of Amen, was certainly not well organised, for we have several accounts of embezzlements of the properties of the temple of Amen by the stewards and scribes, of the robbing of graves, etc. The constant necessity of removing the mummies of the early kings in the west part of Thebes from their magnificent tombs into secret caves, shows the weakness of the government.

Moreover, the great state trials were conducted on a very simple system. The question Guilty or Not Guilty was put to the statue of Amen, which gave its verdict by the mouth of an oracle.

One sees how perfectly realised is the idea of God’s rule in practice. Doubtless the theory was at this time evolved in Thebes, later in Ethiopia, that the king was not only obliged to consult the oracle in all his acts, but also that he was appointed and could be deposed by the oracle.

The title of commander-in-chief borne by the Theban priests, seems to distinguish them as commanders of the soldiers taken from the Egyptian peasants in contradistinction to the mercenaries which, since Seti I, composed the chief part of the army. This force was partially furnished by those domiciled in the country, and partially by fresh supplies from Libya.

There was thus formed in the country an exclusive set similar to the Mamelukes, which held the fate of the country in its hand, and which bequeathed the martial profession from father to son.

These mercenaries were classed together under the name of Ma, derived from the contraction of the Libyan name Mashauasha. We soon see from the surnames of the warriors that the Libyans attained ascendance over them; and although the repeated attacks of the Libyans on Egypt were successfully repulsed, they were now in fact rulers of the country.

It is noteworthy that the corps of the Shardana, so often mentioned in more ancient times, is no more spoken of; it must have been absorbed in the mass of the other soldiers. But the name of Mashau has been retained, and in Coptic matoei is still a common name for soldier. One can easily understand that they had frequent opportunities of gaining wealth and land; and the kings granted them exemption from the land tax. At their head stood[173] the “dukes of the Ma,” the grand-duke of the Ma having the chief command. But many of such generalissimi may have had equal rank.

Buiu-uaua, a Libyan, came to Egypt about Her-Hor’s time. His family attained great importance; his fifth descendant, Naromath [Nimrod] was made “grand-duke of the Ma and Generalissimo” sometime under King Painet´em. After his death his son Shashanq succeeded him as commander of the army. An inscription at Abydos shows in what honour he was held, how the king looked after his father’s grave, questioned the oracle at Thebes on his behalf, and prayed God for the victory of the general. It is conceivable that Shashanq ended by trying to gain the crown for himself, 943 (?) B.C.

By peaceable or violent means he was the successor of Hor-Pasebkhanu II, the last Tanite, whose daughter Ka-Ra-maat he married to his son Uasarken, to give support to his dynasty. According to the ruling custom of the Tanites he made Auputh, another of his sons, high priest of Amen and commander-in-chief of all the military forces. By the inscriptions he seems to have been co-regent with his father.

Under the subsequent rulers it remained a custom for one of the king’s sons to be endowed with the highest priestly power in Thebes, and also the priesthood of Ptah at Memphis was given to a branch of the royal family, and the other princes were priests as well as generals.

Moreover, Shashanq seems to have brought forward the descendants of the Ramses, for we find a Ramses prince occupying a high military post under him.

The history of the Hebrews shows that the Pharaohs of the XXIst Dynasty were not in a condition to take part in Asiatic affairs. It was early in Solomon’s reign that the king of the period, probably Pasebkhanu II, entered into relations with the Israelitish state, took Gaza for Solomon and gave it to his daughter as a dowry, and also gave refuge to political fugitives like Jeroboam and Hadad of Edom to leave a loophole for intervention.

The separation of Judah from Israel and the subsequent long civil war offered an opportunity to renew the expeditions into Syria. So Shashanq repaired to Syria in the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam. The scanty remains of the annals of the Hebrew kings only report that he carried off the treasures of the temple and palace at Jerusalem; that is, the golden shields which Solomon had hung up there. The long list of the conquered places upon a wall of the temple of Karnak shows that Israelitish strongholds were likewise conquered and plundered.

The Pharaoh hardly met with any great resistance anywhere. The inscription of his victory contains, according to the fashion of the time, only religious phrases instead of an account of the war. The expedition was nothing more than a predatory raid for booty; it had no political consequences, and it is quite a mistake to think it was undertaken in the interest of Jeroboam against the king of Judah.

The increase of the Egyptian power, consequent on the accession to the throne of the new dynasty, was of short duration. The successors of Shashanq I—Uasarken I, Takeleth I, Uasarken II, Shashanq II, Takeleth II—are only mentioned by name on the monuments. In Thebes they enlarged the entrance hall of the temple of Amen, begun by Shashanq I. We find further traces of them at Bubastis, the cradle of the dynasty, at Memphis, and elsewhere.

The state gradually fell into complete decay under them. The chief generals of the Ma, perhaps partially belonging to the branch lines of the[174] house, founded their own princedoms and shook off the Bubastites. Shashanq III, the successor of Takeleth II, is the last whose name we find in Thebes, where a long and very mutilated inscription of the twenty-ninth year of his reign speaks of gifts which he brought to Amen. Then it seems as if the southern portion of the country was taken by the Ethiopians.

Shashanq III reigned fifty-two years altogether. Then came his son Pamai, who reigned at least two years, and his grandson Shashanq IV, who reigned at least thirty-seven years, until about 735 B.C. We only know of these kings by their being mentioned on several of the monuments to the honour of the Apis bulls which died in their reigns. So their supremacy must at least have been recognised for a time in Memphis. But their dominion must have been limited to the province of Busiris. King Piankhi of Ethiopia mentions in his great inscription a grand-duke of the Ma, Shashanq of Busiris, and his successor Pamai, who, presumably, were identical with Shashanq III and Pamai. At the time of this conqueror, about 775 B.C., we find near them a king Nimrod of Hermopolis, a ruler Peftotbast of Heracleopolis Magna, who bore the king’s ring, a king Auputh of the Delta cities Tentremu and Ta-an, and a king Uasarken (III) of Bubastis. The latter probably belongs to the Manethan XXIIIrd Dynasty which came from Tanis, and, according to Africanus, ascended the throne about 823 B.C. Manetho mentions Petasebast as its founder, and he was succeeded by Uasarken, who is presumably the aforementioned Uasarken III. Manetho evidently did not regard the last rulers of the XXIInd Dynasty as legitimate, so, although they are mentioned, they are not included in the chronology.

By the side of these “kings” there are, moreover, numerous princes (Ur) of the Ma, designated in other cases as lords (rpa) or nomarchs (ha). Independent rulers in the few provinces of the Delta, in Athribis, Mendes, Sebennytus, Saïs, etc., and the provost of Letopolis bore the title of high priest.

These leading men came mostly from the leaders of the mercenaries, and their possessions and power constantly tottered. It is very possible that the single states formed a slack political confederation, and it is probable that the descendants of the old ruling house were recognised as the chief feudal lords, while those rulers who usurped the title of king laid claim to complete independence.

THE ETHIOPIAN CONQUEST

At the time when a great conquering kingdom was forming itself on the upper Tigris and began to lay hold on all sides around it, the power of the Pharaohs in the Nile Valley completely went down. The kingdom of Tehutimes III had been divided into a succession of small independent principalities and was ruled by dynasties which had arisen from the leaders of the mercenaries. On the other hand, in the upper valley of the Nile, in the lands first joined to Egypt in the time of Usertsen III and afterwards for five centuries by Tehutimes I, there arose the powerful kingdom of Cush (Greek Æthiopia, now Nubia). Its capital was Napata in the Gebel Barhal, “the sacred mountain,” at the foot of which Amenhotep III had already founded a great sanctuary to the Theban Amen. By its long connection with Egypt, Egyptian culture was completely naturalised in Ethiopia. Egyptian was the official language, the writing was in hieroglyphics, the styling of the kings was after that of the Pharaohs. Above all, the Egyptian, and especially the Theban, religion of Amen gained complete dominion in Cush. In the name of Amen the kings went to battle; they were fully[175] dependent on his instructions and oracles; they carefully observed the laws on outer cleanliness and on the food forbidden by religion. What had remained theory in Egypt, became practice in Ethiopia; a long inscription describes to us how the god himself immediately elects the king through his oracle, and strikingly confirms the accounts of the Greeks. Whence it followed that the priests could command the king in the name of the god to put an end to his life, a prerogative which Ergamenes abolished in the third century B.C. By these circumstances it can be seen why the Egyptian priests described Ethiopia to the Greeks as the Promised Land. From these circumstances it can also be supposed that the rise of the kingdom of Napata was connected with the usurpation of the priests of the Theban Amen at the time of the XXIst Dynasty, an assumption which is confirmed by many of the kings having borne the name of Piankhi, prominent in the family of Her-Hor. After that time there was no question of the rule of the Pharaohs over Cush; so perhaps relatives of the priests of Amen may have founded the Ethiopian town circa 1000 B.C.

When the power of the XXIInd Dynasty became lamed, the kings of Napata could extend their dominion to Upper Egypt. Probably about the end of the reign of Shashanq III, 800 B.C., Thebes may have fallen into their hands; in the first half of the eighth century the valley of the Nile to the vicinity of Hermopolis was under the rule of the Ethiopian king Piankhi. In his time the Prince Tefnekht of Saïs succeeded in subjecting the west part of the Delta in Lower Egypt, in winning Memphis, and in making all the numerous princes, kings, and small lords of the middle and east Delta, “all princes of Lower Egypt who wear the feather” (the sign of the warrior casts of the Ma), acknowledge his supremacy. He did not adopt the title of king, probably because he wished to violate as little as possible the relations of rank which existed amongst the mercenary princes. From Memphis he went south, subjected Crocodilopolis, Oxyrhynchus and others, besieged Heracleopolis, the royal residence of Peftotbast, and compelled King Nimrod of Hermopolis to submit. Then Piankhi stepped forward, called to help by the adversaries of Tefnekht. His army conquered a hostile fleet on the Nile, drove Tefnekht back at Heracleopolis, besieged Nimrod in Hermopolis, and seized a number of small places. Then the king himself appeared at the seat of war; he compelled Nimrod to capitulate, and received rich presents from him. After the fall of Hermopolis, all the small places subjected themselves, only Memphis had to be taken by storm, after a plan of Tefnekht to relieve it had failed. Then Piankhi advanced to the Delta; small princes hastened together before him to swear allegiance and bring him rich gifts. Thus Tefnekht was no longer strong enough to assert his position; Piankhi may also have had misgivings as to waging a dangerous war in the west Delta. He contented himself with Tefnekht’s taking the oath of allegiance in the presence of the ambassador of the Ethiopian king and sending him presents after being promised safety.

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The campaigns of Piankhi, which fell in the year XXI of his reign (circa 775 B.C.), do not seem to have resulted in a lasting subjection of Egypt. If the vassal king Uasarken (III) of Bubastis was the second ruler of the XXIIIrd Dynasty, the Ethiopians must by that time have been expelled from Upper Egypt; for we meet with the third ruler of this house, Psamus, in two small inscriptions in the temple of Karnak. In the monuments Manetho lets him be succeeded by an unauthenticated king, Zet. Then follows the XXIVth Dynasty, which, according to him, only consists of the Saïte Bakenranf (probably 733-729 B.C.), who, according to the reliable Greek reports, was a son of Tnephachthus, that is to say, of Tefnekht, Piankhi’s adversary. In tradition he is praised as a wise prince and great legislator; from the monuments we only know that in his sixth year, an Apis was placed in the same sepulchral chamber with one that died under Shashanq IV; according to this he probably succeeded the last title-bearing king of the XXIInd Dynasty, but must already have reigned for some time previously in Saïs.

In Ethiopia, Piankhi (it is not known whether after one or more interregnums) was followed by Kashta, who was married to Shepenapet, a daughter of King Uasarken, probably Uasarken III of Bubastis. His son Shabak repeated the expedition to Egypt, conquered Bakenranf,—according to Manetho he burnt him alive,—and compelled the local dynasties to acknowledge his supremacy (728 B.C.). He took the title of a king of Egypt, but as real rulers of the land he established his sister Ameniritis and her husband, Piankhi (II?). We often meet with Shabak and his sister in the temples of Thebes, likewise in Hammamat and elsewhere; an exquisite alabaster statue of the queen has been found in Karnak. Greek tradition asserts that the Ethiopian king reigned very mildly over Egypt, executions never took place, criminals were made to build canals and dams. But a fixed and uniform dominion was never practised by the Ethiopians over Egypt. As in the time of Piankhi, the local dynasties remained in possession of their dominions, and amongst them in all probability also the successors of Tefnekht and Bakenranf in Saïs, the ancestors of the XXVIth Dynasty.

Although in the year 725 (II Kings xvii. 4) and in 720 (Annals of Sargon), Shabak is called “King of Egypt,” yet in 715 Sargon speaks of the tribute of “Pharaoh, King of Egypt”; in 711 he mentions the same together with the King of Melukhkha (i.e. Cush), and in Sennacherib’s time the “Kings of Egypt” appear together with “the troops of the King of Melukhkha.”

Numerous battles for the possession of the Lower Nile occupied the reigns of Shabak and his successors; it made it impossible for them to take part in the affairs of Asia, no matter how much they desired done.

Shabak of Cush and Egypt was succeeded in the year 716 (?) by Shabatakh who, according to Manetho, was his son, and of whom only scattered monuments have been preserved in Karnak and Memphis. But in the year 704 he was succeeded by a younger, more vigorous prince, Tirhaqa. The latter appears not to have belonged to the royal family, but to have acquired the throne by marriage with the wife of Shabak and to have seized the government in the name of the latter’s son, Tanut-Amen; in Karnak the two conjointly raised a temple to Osiris Ptah, and are here both called kings in exactly the same terms. Tirhaqa was twenty years old when he obtained the double crown. The numerous princes of the Egyptian cities acknowledged his supremacy, and he was able to turn his attention to renewing Shabak’s interference in Syria. A number of[177] Syrian princes were ready to join the liberator from the Assyrian yoke, especially Elulæus of Tyre, Hezekiah of Judah, who, in the year 714, had succeeded Ahaz, and Zidqa of Askalon. King Padi of Ekron remained faithful to the Assyrians, but his magnates revolted against him and delivered him up to Hezekiah. It might have been hoped that Sennacherib would be detained for a long time in Babylonia. We learn that Merodach-baladan had opened negotiations with Hezekiah, so that a great coalition against Assyria seems to have been planned.

Yet this time also the Assyrians were able to forestall their adversaries. Before their preparations were completed, in the beginning of 701, Sennacherib appeared in Syria and turned first against Elulæus. Sidon, Sarepta, Akko, and the other towns subject to him submitted, and he himself fled to Cyprus. From Phœnicia, Sennacherib marched to Philistia, having received in every way the homage of those vassals who had remained loyal. Zidqa of Askalon was captured, his towns reduced, and a new king set up. Then, the Great King further informs us, he marched against Ekron, when the army of the King of Cush (Assyrian, Melukhkha) and the princes of Egypt came to its assistance. At Altaku he defeated this force, took that city and Timnath, reduced Ekron where he punished the instigator of the rebellion, and restored King Padi, who had been taken as a prisoner to Jerusalem.

Trusting in Pharaoh and in Jehovah, Hezekiah persisted in resisting. Meantime the army of Tirhaqa, King of Cush, marched up. Sennacherib advanced against him and again demanded the surrender of Jerusalem. But Hezekiah, trusting in Jehovah’s word as announced to him by the prophet Isaiah, once more refused. In the night the Mal’ak-Yahveh (the angel of the Lord) smites the Assyrian army, so that 185,000 men die, and Sennacherib had to return to Nineveh.

The Egyptians gave Herodotus a similar account: after the Ethiopian Sabaco [Shabak], a former priest of Ptah, Sethos, who had been at enmity with the warrior caste, ruled over Egypt. Now when Sennacherib, “King of the Arabians and Assyrians,” made an expedition against Egypt, the warriors refused to fight, and Sethos was in great distress. But the gods sent field-mice against the hostile army which was encamped at Pelusium, and the mice gnawed the bows and all the leather trappings of the enemy, so that on the following day they could easily be defeated by the Egyptian artisans and merchants that had been impressed into service.

We can never be completely clear as to what did happen, especially so long as the position of the places mentioned is not positively ascertained. This much is established, that although Sennacherib may have exaggerated the importance of the victory at Altaku, he did not suffer defeat at the hands of the Egyptians. For in that case Tirhaqa would have followed up his victory—while, as a matter of fact, he did not again interfere in Syria for the space of thirty years—and the Egyptians would have spoken of a victory and not of a miracle. It is much more likely that it was some natural visitation, presumably a pestilence, which compelled Sennacherib to give up the invasion of Egypt and raise the siege of Jerusalem. There was, however, no further hope of aid from Egypt, so Hezekiah made his peace with the Great King and sent to his capital the heavy contribution which could, only with great difficulty, be raised by the little city. In spite of the half compulsory retreat, the supremacy over Syria was secured; during the next decades none of the petty states ventured to dream of a revolt from the Assyrian. It was not till towards the end of his reign,[178] after 672 B.C., that Esarhaddon undertook a great campaign. Again had rebellion broken out in Syria in reliance on Ethiopian support: King Baal of Tyre had renounced his allegiance. Esarhaddon determined to find some means of putting an end to the ever-recurring danger. Tyre was blockaded anew, but the main army marched straight on Egypt. The prince of the desert Arabs furnished camels, and the toilsome march from Raphia to Pelusium was successfully accomplished. We do not know whether Tirhaqa was in a position to offer resistance; at all events Memphis was taken, and the Assyrian army penetrated as far as Thebes. Tirhaqa had to retreat to Ethiopia, and the numerous provincial princes of Egypt submitted, and were confirmed in possession as tributary vassals. No less than twenty of them are mentioned as being summoned to Thebes from the Delta and the towns of Upper Egypt. The most powerful amongst them was Neku, the lord of Saïs and Memphis (according to Manetho 671-664 B.C.), whose forefathers, Stephinates and Nechepsos, had already risen in power in Saïs, and were probably the direct successors of Tefnekht and Bocchoris (Bakenranf). At the bidding of the Assyrian king, Neku had to change the name of Saïs into Karbilmatati, “garden of the lord of the countries”; in the same way his son Psamthek received the Assyrian name of Nabu-shezib-anni. From this time Esarhaddon styles himself “King of the Kings of Misir (Lower Egypt), Patoris (Upper Egypt), and Cush.” On the 12th of Airu (April), 668 B.C., Esarhaddon laid down the government. He set his illegitimate son Shamash-shum-ukin over the Babylonian provinces as vice-king, while Asshurbanapal inherited the crown of the Assyrian empire. The change of rulers encouraged Tirhaqa to attempt to win back Egypt. Mentu-em-ha, the governor of Thebes, hailed him as a deliverer. Memphis was also won, and in Thebes restoration works were even taken in hand. But the success was not a lasting one; an army despatched by Asshurbanapal beat the Ethiopian troops, and Tirhaqa had to fly to Thebes but did not manage to hold it (about 667 B.C.). It is true that several Egyptian princes, Neku, Pakruru of Pisept, and Sharludari of Tanis (Pelusium), now attempted to overthrow the rule of the foreigner and bring back Tirhaqa: but the Assyrian generals anticipated them; Neku and Sharludari were taken and the rebel towns severely punished. In Neku, Asshurbanapal hoped to be able to win a firm support for his rule, and presumably on information of warlike preparations in Ethiopia, he released him from his captivity with rich presents and reinstated him in his principality.

In the year 664-663 Tirhaqa died; he was succeeded by his stepson Tanut-Amen, who was already advanced in years. A dream which promised him the double crown, induced him, so he states in an inscription, to lead his army from Napata against Egypt in the very beginning of his reign. At Thebes he encountered no resistance; before Memphis the enemy’s troops were beaten and the town taken. In one of these engagements Neku, the most powerful of the Assyrian vassals, probably met his death: Herodotus relates that he was slain by the Ethiopian king, and according to Manetho he died 663 B.C. On the other hand, the attempt to conquer the towns of the Delta was unsuccessful: but some of the vassals, including Pakruru of Pisept, presented themselves at the court at Memphis. Tanut-Amen’s inscription tells only of the long theological discourses which the king held before them, and how, after having been well entertained, each returned to his own town. Silence is preserved as to the sequel; from Asshurbanapal’s annals we learn that the feeble prince, who was completely[179] under the dominion of theological fancies, evacuated the country before the Assyrian army, without striking a blow, and returned to his own land. This terminated the Ethiopian rule for all time (about 662 B.C.): Thebes fell again into the hands of the Assyrians and rich booty was carried to Nineveh. The memory of the retreat of the Ethiopians was preserved down to a late period; the priests told Herodotus that Shabak, the representative of the Ethiopian rule, had voluntarily evacuated Egypt after a reign of fifty years, in consequence of a dream. It is true that they omitted to mention that as a result of this the country fell into the hands of the Assyrians.

The following table will assist the reader in straightening out the dynasties of this much confused period.

TABLE OF CONTEMPORANEOUS DYNASTIES

Dates	XXIInd Dynasty	XXIIIrd Dynasty	XXIVth Dynasty	XXVth Dynasty
B.C.	Bubastites (From monuments at Memphis)	Tanites (From Manetho)	Saïtes	Ethiopians
800	1. Shashanq III (52 years) (Perhaps S— of Busiris, of Piankhi Stele)	Petasebast
775	2. Pamai (at least 2 years) (Perhaps P— of Busiris, of Piankhi Stele)	Uasarken III (King of Bubastis according to Piankhi Stele)	Tefnekht (Prince of Saïs according to Piankhi Stele)	Piankhi I
	3. Shashanq IV (at least 37 years) (About 771-735).	Psamus (According to Theban monuments)		Kashta (Husband of Shepenapet, daughter of King Uasarken [III?])
750	Predecessor of Bocchoris (Bakenranf)		4. Bocchoris (of Manetho, or Bakenranf, from the Memphis monuments) ruled, according to Africanus, 6 years, 734-726; according to Eusebius, 44 years, 772-729 [?])
		Zet (Total duration of this dynasty according to Africanus, 89 years. 823-735 B.C.)		5. Shabak (728-717 [Manetho]; brother of Ameniritis, wife of Piankhi II)
725
				6. Shabatakh (716-705 [Manetho])
700	XXVIth Dynasty.			7. Tirhaqa (704-664; only to 685 [Manetho])
	Saïtes (Figures according to Manetho)
675	Stephinates, 684-687 Nechepsos, 677-672 Neku I, 671-664			Tanut-Amen (664-663; reigned 12 years [Manetho])
	8. Psamthek I, 663-610 (Psamthek I became king of all Egypt about 655)

The numbers 1, 2, etc., show the direct succession of the recognised legitimate Pharaohs.d

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CHAPTER VIII. THE CLOSING SCENES

[Dynasties XXVI-XXXI: 655-332 B.C.]

A great nation in its time of decline does not sink into utter insignificance without making spasmodic efforts at recuperation. Such efforts were made by Egypt in the XXVIth Dynasty, when there sat upon the throne of Egypt several monarchs who recalled something of the days of yore. Notable among these were Psamthek I (Psammetichus) and Aahmes II, under whose beneficent rule Egypt was voluntarily opened up to commerce with the outside world. These rulers built no lasting monuments comparable to the Pyramids or the Labyrinth, and attempted no conquests like those of Tehutimes and Ramses. But their reigns were marked by a period of national prosperity such as had not been known in Egypt for several centuries; and they were also notable because at this time the first recorded observations that have come down to us were made by foreigners regarding Egyptian history and the Egyptian people. We shall, therefore, consider some details of this dynasty before passing on to a brief consideration of the reign of the Persians in Egypt and an even briefer analysis of the remaining dynasties. In this sweeping view more than three hundred years are covered. During this period the centres of world-historic influence are shifted from Assyria to Babylonia; from Babylonia to Persia; and thence to Greece; but never again does Egypt occupy her old position. Her reminiscent glory only serves to make her the more coveted as a conqueror’s prize. But first there is the bright spot of Psamthek’s reign.a

PSAMTHEK

It was no longer the time of Tehutimes and Ramses. It was the turn of Egypt to be enslaved, now by the “vile race of the Cushites,” now by the[181] “vile race of the Kheta.” The Egyptian monuments, which register only victories, would not have sufficed to make known to us the history of this troubled epoch; it is only since the Assyrian inscriptions have been deciphered that we have been able to learn of the double conquest of Egypt by Kings Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal.

The princes of the Delta received investiture from these Asiatic conquerors, for whom they had perhaps less aversion than for the Ethiopian kings. Twice, however, was Egypt reconquered by Tirhaqa and by his successor, Tanut-Amen. But all these successive invasions had broken the bond which attached the nomes to the national unity; all that remained was an Egypt parcelled out like feudal Europe after the invasion of the Northmen.

The princes of the South continued to recognise the authority of the Ethiopian Dynasty; those of the Delta, to the number of twelve, formed a sort of federation which the Greek authors call the Dodecarchy. But at the end of fifteen years, the prince of Saïs, Psamthek, became an object of suspicion to his colleagues. Herodotus tells us the occasion.

“At the very commencement of their reign, an oracle had foretold to them that he amongst them who should make libations in the temple of Hephaistos (Ptah) with a brazen cup, would have the empire of all Egypt. Some time later, as they were on the point of making libations, after having offered sacrifices in the temple, the high priest presented them with cups of gold; but he made a mistake in the number, and instead of twelve cups, he only brought eleven for the twelve kings. Then Psammetichus [Psamthek], who happened to be in the first rank, took his helmet, which was of bronze, and used it for the libations. The other kings, reflecting on his action and on the oracle, and recognising that he had not acted from premeditated design, thought that it would be unjust to put him to death; but they despoiled him of the greater part of his power, and relegated him to the marshes, forbidding him to leave them or to keep up any correspondence with the rest of Egypt.

“Smarting under this outrage, and resolved to avenge himself on the authors of his exile, he sent to Buto to consult the oracle of Leto, the most veracious of the Egyptian oracles. Answer was returned that he would be avenged by men of bronze, coming from the sea. At first he could not persuade himself that men of bronze could come to his aid; but a short time after, some Ionian and Carian pirates, being obliged to put into Egypt, came on shore clothed in bronze armour. An Egyptian ran to carry the news to Psammetichus, and as this Egyptian had never seen men armed in such a manner, he told them that men of bronze, coming from the sea, were pillaging the countryside. The king, perceiving that the oracle was accomplished, made alliance with the Ionians and Carians, and engaged them by large promises to take his part. With these auxiliary troops and the Egyptians who had remained faithful to him, he dethroned the eleven kings.”

Upper Egypt submitted without resistance, and the names of the Ethiopian kings were struck off the Theban monuments. They seem, however, to have retained some partisans, for Psamthek espoused a wife of their race, the means employed by each dynasty to legitimatise its usurpation. He recompensed his auxiliaries by giving them territories near the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, and made them his guard of honour. This was not an innovation; for a long time the kings of Egypt had been wont to take foreigners into their pay, and there is no doubt that there were in the native army many soldiers of Libyan or Ethiopian race; but they were annoyed at the favour shown the newcomers, and emigrated into Ethiopia to the number of two[182] hundred thousand men. Psamthek tried to detain them by appealing to their patriotism, but they struck their lances on their shields and answered that so long as they had arms they would find their own country wherever they chose to establish themselves.

This wholesale desertion was a benefit to Egypt, which it thus relieved from military rule. Conquests lead to inevitable reprisals. Armies, like all privileged classes, end by becoming corrupted, and then, useless in the face of the enemy, they become a heavy burden and an instrument of civil war. Psamthek had no reason to regret these soldiers, who had been unable to repel foreign invasion.

The labours of peace repaired the recent disasters; the temples were rebuilt; the arts shone with a new brilliancy; the whole activity of the nation was turned towards commerce and industry. Psamthek inaugurated a new policy by opening the country to foreigners.

“He received those who visited Egypt with hospitality,” says Diodorus; “he was the first of the Egyptian kings to open markets to other nations, and to give great security to navigators.”

The Greeks, who had helped to conquer the throne, were particularly favoured. Encouraged by the example of the Ionian and Carian adventurers whose services he had paid so well, some Milesian colonists anchored thirty ships at the entrance of the Bolbitinic mouth of the Nile, and there founded a fortified trading establishment. To facilitate commercial relations for the future, Psamthek confided some Egyptian children to the Greeks established in Egypt, that they might learn Greek, and thus arose those interpreters who formed a distinct class in the towns of the Delta. It even appears, according to Diodorus, that Psamthek had his own children taught Greek. The intercourse of the Greeks with the Egyptians became from that time so constant that from the reign of Psammetichus, says Herodotus, we know with certainty all that passed in that country.

The accession of Psamthek and the XXVIth Dynasty is fixed at the year 655 before the Christian era, and it is only from this period that we have certain dates for the history of Egypt. The complete chronology of the XXVIth Dynasty has been recovered in the monuments of the tomb of Apis, discovered by Mariette Bey, in the excavation of the Serapeum of Memphis, and now in the Louvre. This chronology differs somewhat sensibly from that which it had been possible to draw up from Manetho’s lists, so that we are, says De Rougé, obliged to distrust figures preserved in those lists, which a few years ago were regarded as an infallible criterion. An attempt has been made to restore to them the credit they had lost as an instrument of chronology, by attaching to them an undisputed synchronism. According to the calculation of M. Biot, a rising of the star Sothis (Sirius), indicated at Thebes under Ramses III, towards the commencement of the XXth Dynasty, would fall at the beginning of the thirteenth century B.C.

Psamthek had his reign dated from the death of Tirhaqa (664), without taking the Dodecarchy into account, and this is doubtless the reason why Herodotus gives him fifty-four years’ reign, although in reality he reigned only forty-four. He had built the southern pylon of the temple of Ptah at Memphis, and a peristyle court where the Apis bull was fed. The walls were covered with bas-reliefs, and colossi, twelve ells high, took the place of columns; these were probably caryatides like those which are seen at Thebes and Abu Simbel. These structures have disappeared, like all the other buildings of Memphis. The only monuments of the reign of Psamthek which still exist are the twelve columns, twenty-one metres (about sixty-nine feet)[183] high, whose ruins are seen in the first court of the temple of Karnak, where they formed a double rank. One only of these columns is still upright. It is not known whether they were raised to form the centre avenue of a hypostyle hall like that of Seti, or whether they were intended to bear symbolic images which served the Egyptians as military ensigns, such as the ram, the ibis, the sparrow-hawk, the jackal, etc.

Psamthek and his successors, though not residing at Thebes, restored its monuments and repaired the disasters of the Assyrian invasion. In the Louvre and the British Museum there are numerous sculptures of the Saïtic epoch, which is one of the grand epochs of Egyptian art.

In the reign of Psamthek, the Scythians, driving the Cimmerians before them, had invaded Asia and were threatening Egypt. Psamthek preferred to buy their retreat by a money payment, rather than expose the country to the danger of invasion, and the barbarians retraced their steps northward. But in order to protect Egypt on the northeast, it was necessary to have a foothold in Palestine, and Psamthek therefore laid siege to the town of Ashdod.

This siege, says Herodotus, lasted twenty-nine years, but perhaps, as M. Maspero thinks, Herodotus’ interpreters meant to say that the taking of Ashdod took place in the twenty-ninth year of Psamthek’s reign. His son, Neku II, who succeeded him in 612, desiring to profit by the changes which had supervened in Asia, and to re-establish the dominion of Egypt, gave battle to the Jews and Syrians near Megiddo. Josiah, king of Judah, was killed, his son Jehoahaz, whom the Jews had proclaimed king, was dethroned by Neku, who put in his place Eliakim, another son of Josiah, and remained master of all Syria. But he soon found a redoubtable adversary in front of him, for the kingdom of Babylon had succeeded to that of Nineveh. Beaten by Nebuchadrezzar at Carchemish on the banks of the Euphrates, Neku lost all his conquests and returned precipitately to Egypt.

His name remains connected with an enterprise more important than his military expeditions. Two kings of the XIXth Dynasty, Seti I and Ramses II, had had a canal of communication dug between the eastern branch of the Nile and the Red Sea. But whether it was that this canal had not been finished, or that it was blocked up by the sands, Neku desired to restore it. The canal began a little above Bubastis. According to Herodotus, a hundred and twenty thousand workmen perished in digging it, and Neku had it discontinued in consequence of an oracle, which warned him that he was labouring for the barbarians; an oracle which was accomplished, for the canal was finished by the Persians. In our own day, when it was desired to open direct communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the operations were begun with the restoration of Neku’s canal, to supply fresh water for the workmen who were digging the maritime canal.

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After abandoning his project, Neku conceived another which might have had still more important consequences. He sent some Phœnician sailors to make a voyage of circumnavigation round Africa.b

“The Phœnicians,” says Herodotus,e “having embarked on the Erythræan Sea, sailed into the Southern Sea. As the autumn was come they landed on that part of Libya at which they found themselves, and sowed corn. They then awaited the time of the harvest, and having gathered it again took to the sea. Having voyaged thus for two years, in the third year they doubled the pillars of Heracles and, returning to Egypt, related what I do not believe, but which others may perhaps credit; that whilst sailing round Libya they had the sun on their right.”

Psamthek was well known to classic writers under the name Psammetichus. The old historian Diodorus picturesquely tells of his accession. We prefer to quote the old translation of Booth, 1700.

THE GOOD KING SABACH [SHABAK] AND PSAMMETICHUS

“After a long time, one Sabach an Ethiopian came to the Throne, going beyond all his Predecessors in his Worship of the Gods, and kindness to his Subjects. Any Man may judge and have a clear Evidence of his gentle Disposition in this, that when the Laws pronounced the severest Judgment (I mean Sentence of Death) he chang’d the Punishment, and made an Edict that the Condemn’d Persons should be kept to work in the Towns in Chains, by whose Labour he rais’d many Mounts, and made many Commodious Canals; conceiving by this means he should not only moderate the severity of the Punishment, but instead of that which was unprofitable, advance the publick Good, by the Service and Labours of the Condemn’d.

“A Man may likewise judge of his extraordinary Piety from his Dream, and his Abdication of the Government; for the Tutelar God of Thebes, seem’d to speak to him in his Sleep, and told him that he could not long reign happily and prosperously in Egypt, except he cut all the Priests in Pieces, when he pass’d through the midst of them with his Guards and Servants; which Advice being often repeated, he at length sent for the Priests from all parts, and told them that if he staid in Egypt any longer, he found that he should displease God, who never at any time before by Dreams or Visions commanded any such thing. And that he would rather be gone and lose his Life, being pure and innocent, than displease God, or enjoy the Crown of Egypt, by staining his Life with the horrid Murder of the Innocent.

“And so at length giving up the Kingdom into the Hands of the People, he return’d into Ethiopia. Upon this there was an Anarchy for the space of Two Years; but the People falling into Tumults and intestine Broyls and Slaughters one of another, Twelve of the chief Nobility of the Kingdom joyn’d in a Solemn Oath, and then calling a Senate at Memphis, and making some Laws for the better directing and cementing of them in mutual peace and fidelity, they took upon them the Regal Power and Authority.

“After they had govern’d the Kingdom very amicably for the space of Fifteen Years, (according to the Agreement which they had mutually sworn to observe) they apply’d themselves to the building of a Sepulcher, where they might all lye together; that as in their Life-time they had been equal in their Power and Authority, and had always carried it with love and respect one towards another; so after Death (being all bury’d together in one Place) they might continue the Glory of their Names in one and the same Monument.

[185]

“To this end they made it their business to excel all their Predecessors in the greatness of their Works: For near the Lake of Myris in Lybia, they built a Four-square Monument of Polish’d Marble, every square a Furlong in length, for curious Carvings and other pieces of Art, not to be equall’d by any that should come after them. When you are enter’d within the Wall, there’s presented a stately Fabrick, supported round with Pillars, Forty on every side: The Roof was of one intire Stone, whereon was curiously carv’d Racks and Mangers for Horses, and other excellent pieces of Workmanship, and painted and adorn’d with divers sorts of Pictures and Images; where likewise were portray’d the Resemblances of the Kings, the Temples, and the Sacrifices in most beautiful Colours. And such was the Cost and Stateliness of this Sepulcher, begun by these Kings, that (if they had not been dethron’d before it was perfected) none ever after could have exceeded them in the state and magnificence of their Works. But after they had reign’d over Egypt Fifteen Years, all of them but one lost their Sovereignty in the manner following.

“Psammeticus Saïtes [Psamthek I], one of the Kings, whose Province was upon the Sea Coasts, traffickt with all sorts of Merchants, and especially with the Phenicians and Grecians; by this means inriching his Province, by vending his own Commodities, and the importation of those that came from Greece, he not only grew very wealthy, but gain’d an interest in the Nations and Princes abroad; upon which account he was envy’d by the rest of the Kings, who for that reason made War upon him. Some antient Historians tell a Story, That these Princes were told by the Oracle, That which of them should first pour Wine out of a brazen Viol to the God ador’d at Memphis, should be sole Lord of all Egypt. Whereupon Psammeticus when the Priest brought out of the Temple Twelve Golden Viols, pluckt off his Helmet, and pour’d out a Wine Offering from thence; which when his Collegues took notice of, they forbore putting him to death, but depos’d him, and banish’d him into the Fenns, bordering upon the Sea-Coasts.[10]

“Whether therefore it were this, or Envy as is said before, that gave Birth to this Dissention and Difference amongst them, it’s certain Psammeticus hir’d Souldiers out of Arabia, Caria and Ionia, and in a Field-Fight near the City Moniemphis, he got the day. Some of the Kings of the other side were slain, and the rest fled into Africa, and were not able further to contend for the Kingdom.

“Psammeticus having now gain’d possession of the whole, built a Portico to the East Gate of the Temple at Memphis, in honour of that God, and incompass’d the Temple with a Wall, supporting it with Colosses of Twelve Cubits high in the room of Pillars. He bestow’d likewise upon his Mercenary Souldiers many large Rewards over and above their Pay promis’d them.”c

To return to later and less credulous historians, it will be well to note a more authoritative account of this period.

THE RESTORATION IN EGYPT

When Asshurbanapal again subjected the petty princes of Egypt, he had favoured none so much as Neku I of Saïs. The latter had fallen in battle against Tanut-Amen; his son Psamthek had sought refuge with the Assyrians and had been brought back to his dominions by them. As soon as[186] circumstances allowed, he threw off the Assyrian yoke, as his father had done before him. At the same time he took up the task begun by Tefnekht, his predecessor and courageous ancestor, of suppressing the petty princes and uniting Egypt. King Gyges of Lydia sent him auxiliaries; they were the Carian and Ionian troops, which, according to Herodotus, landed in Egypt one day and were employed by Psamthek against his rivals. Soon the first mercenaries were followed by others; they formed the backbone of the king’s army.

What took place in the individual fights is not known; that is, we have no knowledge of the battles with the Assyrians. But about the year 655 the object was obtained, Egypt freed and united. So as to establish his rule safely, the king married Shepenapet, daughter of Queen Ameniritis.

The chief opponents of the new ruler were doubtless the mercenaries organised as a warrior caste, the Ma, who had shared the land under the Ethiopian and Assyrian supremacy. Herodotus relates that 240,000 warriors “who stood to the left of the king” had wandered to Ethiopia, under Psamthek, since for three years they were not relieved in the garrisons; the king, who hastened after them, could not persuade them to return. Although the recital is legendary with regard to the immense number, the fact fits in clearly with the history of the times that a considerable number of the warrior caste, who would not submit to the new circumstances, should have left the land, been taken up by the king of Napata and colonised the valley of the Upper Nile.

It has already been mentioned that Psamthek, so as to protect himself against the renewed invasion of the Assyrians, also turned to Asia. As Aahmes I, after the expulsion of the Hyksos, invested Sherohan in Palestine, so for twenty-nine years Psamthek took the field against Ashdod, until he conquered the town. His power does not seem to have extended farther south than the First Cataract. His grandson, Psamthek II, first took the field against Ethiopia. To his time probably belong the inscriptions which Greek, Carian, and Phœnician soldiers have inscribed on the colossi of the temples of Abu Simbel in their mother tongues. Southern Nubia did not remain long conquered. The three strong border fortresses of Elephantine in the south, Daphne in the east, and Marea in the west, essentially determine the limits of Egyptian power.

The new state, in which, after some two hundred years of anarchy, the kingdom of the Pharaohs was again established, was only partly national. The dynasty was, as the name teaches, not of Egyptian origin, but in all probability Libyan. The troops which the princes of Saïs could raise were doubtless for the greater part Libyans, and the particular characteristic was[187] due to the mercenaries who had come across the sea. In future days the Ionians and Carians who were colonised in the “camps” between Bubastis and Pelusium, on that most dangerous east border of the land, were the chief support of the throne; under Uah-ab-Ra [Apries] their number increased to thirty thousand men.

Thus from the beginning the kings of the restoration, like the Ptolemies, held a much freer position, which raised them far above their predecessors. They, manifestly with intention, held Saïs as residence, although Memphis was honoured as the oldest capital, and structures were built on the ruins of ancient Thebes. With full knowledge they carried on a considerable commerce. Psamthek’s son, Neku II (612-596), began to build a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea; he sent out a Phœnician fleet to circumnavigate Africa, which returned to the Mediterranean three years after its departure from Suez. A fleet was maintained on the Arabian as well as in the Mediterranean Sea.

With the Greeks, who in earlier times came to Egypt only as pirates or were driven there by storm, but now sought to draw all the coasts of the Mediterranean into their commerce, active negotiations were taken up. From trading with them arose the numerous caste of the interpreters. Neku II sends oblations to Brandichæ; to his son, Psamthek II, there came an embassy from Elis; the Egyptian divinities begin to become known to the Greeks: whilst amongst Asiatics closely related to the culture and customs of the Egyptians there reigned active negotiation and a reciprocal influence, the Hellenes, of quite other disposition and more active in commerce, remained strangers to the Egyptians. They were met with suspicion, and restrictions were laid upon them. Aahmes was the first to assign them a place in Naucratis, south of Saïs, where they gained influence and property and could organise themselves as an independent community, but the Greek merchants were forbidden to navigate in any other branch of the Nile.

Internally the XXVIth Dynasty in every sense bears the stamp of restoration. The end of a formidable crisis had come, and the endeavour was made to re-establish conditions as they were conceived to have been of old—that is to say—to introduce the abstract ideal.

Therefore the Egyptians held themselves more aloof from the strangers, most carefully observing all laws as to cleanliness; the god of the strangers and hostile powers, the till-now-honoured Set, was cast out of the Pantheon, his name and image effaced everywhere: also the divinities taken up from the Syrian neighbours, such as Astarte and Anata, completely disappeared. In religion they turned back to the oldest laws; the dead formulas of the tombs of the Pyramids were revived, the worship of the early kings of Memphis, Sneferu, Khufu, Sahu-Ra, was again taken up.

The art of this period is throughout archaic, constituting a period of efflorescence distinguished by excellence and neatness of the forms, but wanting in all originality. In writing, the endeavour is made as far as possible to imitate the old models. Naturally in this manner the relative simplicity and naturalness of the olden times was not reached; the heritage of a thousand years’ development, the endless magic and formal ritual with its wearying system and its dead phrases, is carefully preserved and ever increased. If, according to Greek reports, the Egyptians believed in the transmigration of souls after death into the body of another being, and that, after having gone through all the animals of land and sea and air, they returned to human form after three thousand years, this doctrine, which is nowhere to be found in manuscripts left to us, may have arisen at this time[188] from their view of conditions after death and the consubstantiality of all life. That Egypt which the Greeks learnt to know was a well-preserved mummy of primitive times and served to impress them by its uniqueness and its age, and individually to stimulate, but was no more in a position to awaken a new life.

In the social domain, if we can believe the reports of the Greeks, the separation of classes was brought about. The priesthood was an exclusive caste, and their dignity was hereditary; next to them come the completely exclusive warrior class, consisting of the successors of the Ma, divided into the Calasirians and Hermotybians. Priests as well as warriors are exempt from taxes and in possession of a great part of the agricultural land, which they hire out to peasants for large sums of money. The remaining part of the soil is royal dominion. Far below the privileged classes stands the mass of the people, the labourers, manufacturers, merchants, finally the shepherds of the Delta, of Semitic descent, and the inhabitants of the Delta living on fisheries of the swamps, both of which are considered unclean in Egypt. In theory the principle may also be set down here that every class forms a decided caste; that this was not practically carried through is taught us by the report of Herodotus, II, 147, that the Shepherd race, being unclean, could marry only within itself. From which we may infer that other castes were permitted to intermarry.d

THE PERSIAN CONQUEST AND THE END OF EGYPTIAN AUTONOMY

With the XXVIth Dynasty the curtain was practically drawn for all time on Egyptian autonomy. The recurrent struggle between Asia and Africa was renewed with disastrous consequences to the people of the Nile. We have here to do with the Persian conquest, and in particular with the deeds of Cambyses.

Neku reigned six years according to Manetho, sixteen according to Herodotus, and this latter figure is confirmed by two steles at Florence and Leyden. His son, Psamthek II, whom Herodotus calls Psammis (596), reigned six years and died on his return from an expedition into Ethiopia. It was probably during this expedition that some Greek and Phœnician soldiers carved their names on the leg of one of the colossi of Abu-Simbel.

In the reign of Uah-ab-Ra, the Apries of the Greeks (591), Syria and Palestine were the theatre of important events. The petty people of these countries, threatened by the Chaldean power, tried to save their independence by the help of Egypt.

Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, first turned his forces against the kingdom of Judah, which succumbed in spite of Egypt’s tardy and inefficient intervention. Jerusalem was taken, and the people led away to captivity. The Jewish prophets, in their anger against Egypt, announced for it the fate of Judah, and, if we are to believe Josephus, these predictions were accomplished; for Nebuchadrezzar is said to have defeated and killed Uah-ab-Ra and subdued Egypt. But Herodotus and Diodorus say nothing of this defeat, and speak, on the contrary, of a naval victory of Apries over the Phœnicians and Cypriotes. M. Renan’s explorations have brought to light the ruins of a temple raised by the Egyptians at Gebel, a fact which seems to indicate that they remained masters of the country.

Uah-ab-Ra undertook to subdue the Greek colony of Cyrene, and, as it would not have been prudent to oppose his Greek auxiliaries to a people of the same race, he employed only native troops on this expedition, which was[189] an unfortunate one. The Egyptian soldiers, believing he had undertaken it solely in order to get rid of them, revolted. To appease them, Uah-ab-Ra sent an officer named Aahmes, whose good nature pleased the soldiers. As he was speaking to them, one of them put a helmet on his head, and there was a cry that they ought to make him their king. He did not wait to be persuaded, and immediately put himself at the head of the rebels.

Uah-ab-Ra, learning this, gave orders to one of those who remained faithful to him to bring Aahmes to him, dead or alive. The envoy received only a very coarse answer, and when he returned, the king had his nose and ears cut off. The indignant Egyptians instantly went over to Aahmes. Uah-ab-Ra at the head of his Carian and Ionian mercenaries, to the number of thirty thousand, marched against the rebels, who were far more numerous. He was beaten and led back, a prisoner, into the palace which had been his. Aahmes at first treated him with consideration, but the Egyptians insisted that he should be delivered up to them, and strangled. He had reigned twenty years. Aahmes had him buried in the tomb of his ancestors, and espoused a daughter of Psamthek II in order to graft himself on the Saïtic Dynasty.

Aahmes II, though he had become king by a reaction of the national party against the foreigner, nevertheless showed himself still more favourable to the Greeks than his predecessors had been. He permitted them to establish themselves at Naucratis, on the Canopic branch of the Nile, and to raise temples to their gods. One of these temples, the Hellenion, was built at the public expense by the principal Greek towns in Asia. Particular temples were consecrated to Apollo by the Milesians, to Hera by the Samians, and to Zeus by the Æginians. Aahmes sent his statue to several towns in Greece, and when the temple of Delphi was destroyed by fire, he desired to contribute to the subscription opened for its reconstruction, and offered a talent of alum from Egypt. He entered into an alliance with the Cyrenæans, and married one of the daughters of the country; he also allied himself with Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and with Crœsus, king of the Lydians. He made no war except against the Cypriotes, whom he subjected to a tribute. He chiefly occupied himself, as Psamthek had done, in developing the trade of Egypt. Like him he erected monuments at Saïs and Memphis, which are no longer in existence, but of which Herodotus speaks with admiration. There is at the Louvre a monolithic chapel in pink granite, which dates from the reign of Aahmes, and the British Museum possesses the sarcophagus of one of his wives, Queen Ankhnes, who long resided at Thebes. It is believed that the hypogees of Assassif, near Gurnah, belong to the Saïtic epoch. There is one of them which, in extent and richness, yields to none of the tombs of Biban-el-Moluk. This is the tomb of a high priest who was at the same time a royal functionary.

Aahmes was nothing more than a soldier of fortune, and it appears that the ceremonious etiquette of the ancient kings of Egypt wearied him. When he had employed his morning in administering justice, he passed the rest of the time at table with his friends. Certain courtiers represented to him that he was compromising his dignity. He answered that a bow-string could not always be stretched. At the beginning of his reign the obscurity of his birth made him despised. Perceiving this, he had melted a gold basin, in which he used to wash his feet, made from it the golden statue of a god and offered it to the public veneration.

“Thus it was with me,” he said; “I was a plebeian, now I am your king; render me, then, the honour and respect which are due me.” The people understood the allegory, and ended by becoming attached to this sensible[190] man, who took his trade of king seriously. It was from him, according to Herodotus, that the Athenians borrowed their famous law against idleness.

“He ordered each Egyptian to declare to the nomarch, every year, what were his means of subsistence. He who did not comply with the law, or could not prove that he lived by honest means, was punished with death. Solon, the Athenian, borrowed this law from Egypt, and established it in Athens, where it is still in force, because it is a wise one and no fault can be found with it.”

Herodotus says that Egypt was never happier or more flourishing than in the reign of Aahmes, and that there were then in that country twenty thousand well-peopled towns or villages.

All this prosperity was to disappear in one day, for Egypt was about to founder like Nineveh and Jerusalem and Sardis and Babylon, without previous decay, in one of those sudden and overwhelming storms which sweep monarchies away.

A new empire had just arisen in Asia. Persia had absorbed Media and subdued Chaldea and Asia Minor. Lydia had succumbed so quickly that Aahmes had not been able to succour his ally, Crœsus. Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, left Egypt in peace, and she took good care not to stir; but his son Cambyses felt the need of aggrandising his states, and as in default of reasons wars never lack pretexts, here is the one he gave, or which was perhaps invented as an afterthought.

It was said that Cyrus had asked Aahmes to send him the best physician for diseases of the eye, to be found in his dominion. This physician wished to avenge himself on the king of Egypt, who had torn him from the arms of his wife and children to send him into Persia. He persuaded Cambyses to demand the daughter of Aahmes, counting on a refusal, which would not fail to be considered as an insult. Aahmes knew well that Cambyses would not make his daughter a queen, but a slave of the harem; he sent a daughter of Uah-ab-Ra. The latter disclosed the ruse to the king of Persia, and demanded of him to avenge her father, whose murderer Aahmes had been. Cambyses flew into a violent rage and resolved to carry war into Egypt.

A desert that an army could not cross in less than three days’ march protected Egypt on the side of Asia. Following the advice of Phanes, a Greek officer and deserter from the Egyptian army, Cambyses secured for himself the alliance of the Arab king, who stationed camels laden with skins full of water, all along the route the Persians were to follow. The town of Pelusium, which was the key of Egypt, was besieged by Cambyses. Polyænus relates that he caused dogs, cats, and ibises to be collected, and placed them in front of his army; the Egyptians dared not fly their arrows for fear of hitting the sacred animals, and the town was taken without resistance. Aahmes had just died, after a reign of forty-four years (528). His son, Psamthek III, the Psammenitus of Herodotus, came to meet the enemy. The Greek and Carian mercenaries in the pay of the king of Egypt, learning the treason of Phanes, their former chief, revenged themselves on his children.

“They led them into the camp,” says Herodotus, “and, having placed a mixing bowl between the two armies, they cut their throats under the eyes of their father, mingled their blood with wine and water in the bowl, and, when all the auxiliaries had drunk, rushed into battle.”

It was fierce and bloody; many perished on either side; but at last the Egyptians had the worst of it and fled in disorder to Memphis. Cambyses summoned the town to surrender; the crowd destroyed the Mytilenean[191] vessel which carried the ambassadors, massacred those who manned it, and dragged their limbs through the citadel. The town was taken, and Psamthek brought before the conqueror. He had reigned only six months.

THE ATROCITIES OF CAMBYSES

Cambyses treated him with the utmost severity, and had him led before the town, together with some other Egyptians.

“The king’s daughter,” says Herodotus, “was clad as a slave and sent, pitcher in hand, in search of water, with several other young girls of rank. They passed, weeping, in front of their captive fathers, who groaned at their humiliation. Psammenitus [Psamthek III] saw them and lowered his eyes towards the earth. Then Cambyses caused his son and two thousand young men of the same age to pass before him, with cords round their necks and bridles in their mouths. They were being led to death to avenge the Mytileneans slain at Memphis, for the royal judges had ordained that, for every man killed on that occasion, ten Egyptians of the first families should be put to death. Psammenitus saw them pass and recognised his son; but while the other Egyptians round him wept and lamented themselves, he preserved the same countenance as at the sight of his daughter. When the young men had passed, he perceived an old man who generally ate at his table. This man, despoiled of his goods, and reduced to live on charity, was imploring pity from the soldiers and even from Psammenitus and the Egyptian captives brought into the outskirts of the town. Psammenitus could not restrain his tears; he beat himself on the head and called to his friend. Three guards, deputed to watch him, made this known to Cambyses. He was astonished and sent a messenger to Psammenitus, who questioned him thus:

“‘Cambyses, thy master, demands wherefore, having neither wept or groaned when thou sawest thy daughter treated as a slave and thy son marching to execution, thou shouldst interest thyself in the lot of this beggar who, from what we learn, is neither thy relative nor ally.’

“He answered, ‘Son of Cyrus, the misfortunes of my house are too great to be wept; but the fate of a friend, once happy, and reduced to begging in his old age, has seemed to me to deserve tears.’

“This answer was reported, and appeared a just one. The Egyptians say that Crœsus, who had come into Egypt in the train of Cambyses, wept, and the Persians who were present wept also. Even Cambyses felt some pity. He ordered Psammenitus brought before him and his son to be withdrawn from the number of those about to die.

“Those sent to seek the child did not find him alive; he had been the first struck. They made Psammenitus rise and conducted him into the presence of Cambyses. He remained in the retinue and suffered no violence. The government of Egypt would even have been restored to him if he had not been suspected of exciting disturbances; for the Persians are wont to honour the children of kings and to replace them on the thrones lost by their fathers. But Psammenitus, having conspired, received his reward. Convicted by Cambyses of having urged the Egyptians to revolt, he drank bull’s blood and died of it on the spot.

“From Memphis, Cambyses went on to Saïs, and as soon as he had reached the tomb of Amasis [Aahmes] he ordered the corpse to be exhumed, to be beaten with rods, to have the hair and beard torn out, to be pricked with goads—in short, to be subjected to all sorts of outrages. The executioners soon grew tired of maltreating a lifeless body, from which they could break[192] off nothing, as it was embalmed. Then Cambyses had it burnt without any respect of holy things. Indeed the Persians believe that fire is a god, and it is not permitted, either by their law or by that of the Egyptians, to burn the dead. Thus Cambyses performed on this occasion an act equally condemned by the laws of both peoples.”

In violating the tomb of the man who had usurped the throne of Egypt, Cambyses perhaps counted on rallying the legitimists, for he thus presented himself as the avenger and heir of Uah-ab-Ra. From the inscriptions on a statuette in the Vatican, it appears that, in the early days of his conquest, he avoided giving offence to the religion of the vanquished. He caused the great temple of Nit, where some Persian troops had installed themselves, to be evacuated, and had it repaired at his own expense. He even carried his zeal so far as to be initiated into the mysteries of Osiris. But this apparent and wholly political deference could not last long.

The religious symbols of the Egyptians, the external forms of their worship, inspired profound aversion in the Persians, whose religion greatly resembled the strict monotheism of the Semitic peoples. This antipathy, which was only awaiting an opportunity to manifest itself, blazed out after an unfortunate expedition of Cambyses against Ethiopia. Instead of ascending the Nile as far as Napata, he had taken the shorter route of the desert.

The provisions gave out, and his soldiers were reduced to devouring each other. He returned, having lost many men, and then learnt the complete destruction of another army which he had sent against the Ammonians and which had been entombed under whirlwinds of sand. He was exasperated at this disaster, and, as the Egyptians naturally attributed it to the vengeance of the gods, his fury turned against the Egyptian religion.

[193]

“From Assuan to Thebes and from Thebes to Memphis,” says Mariette, “he marked his route by ruin: the temples were devastated, the tombs of the kings were opened and pillaged.” The mummy of Queen Ankhnes, wife of Aahmes, was torn from its sarcophagus in the depths of a funeral vault behind the Ramesseum, and burned as that of Aahmes himself had been. When this sarcophagus, which is now in London, was discovered by a French officer, remains of charred bones were found in it, according to Champollion Figéac, some of them preserving traces of gilding.

“Cambyses having returned to Memphis,” says Herodotus, “the god Apis, whom the Greeks call Epaphos, manifested himself to the Egyptians. As soon as he had shown himself, they donned their richest clothing and made great rejoicings. Cambyses, believing that they were rejoicing at the ill-success of his arms, called the magistrates of Memphis before him, and asked them why, having exhibited no joy the first time that they saw him in their town, they were exhibiting so much of it since his return and after he had lost part of his army. They told him that their god, who was generally very long in appearing, had just manifested himself, and that the Egyptians were accustomed to celebrate this epiphany by public festivities. Cambyses, hearing this, said that they lied, and punished them with death for liars. When they had been killed he sent for the priests to come into his presence, and, having received the same answer from them, he told them that if any god showed himself familiarly to the Egyptians, he would not hide himself from him, and he ordered them to bring Apis to him. The priests immediately went in search of him.

“This Apis, who is the same as Epaphos, is born of a cow which can bear no further offspring. The Egyptians say that this cow conceives Apis by lightning, which descends from heaven. These are the distinguishing signs of the calf they call Apis: it is black, and bears a white square on its forehead; it has the figure of an eagle on its back, on its tongue that of a beetle, and the hairs of its tail are double.

“As soon as the priest had brought Apis, Cambyses, like a maniac, drew his sword to pierce its belly, but only struck its thigh. Then, beginning to laugh, he said to the priests:

“‘O blockheads, are there such gods, made of flesh and blood and susceptible to the stroke of steel? This god is well worthy of the Egyptians, but you shall have no cause to rejoice for having attempted to laugh at our expense.’

“Thereupon he had them whipped by those deputed for that purpose, and ordered such Egyptians as were found celebrating a festival to be slain. Thus the festivities ceased and the priests were punished. Apis, wounded in the thigh, languished, lying in the temple, and when he was dead the priests buried him, unknown to Cambyses. As to him, who was already wanting in good sense, he was from that time smitten with madness, the Egyptians say, in punishment of his crime.”

Among the funeral steles of the Apis, found by Mariette in the excavations of the Serapeum at Memphis, and which are now in the Egyptian Museum at the Louvre, are two connected with the facts recounted by Herodotus: one, whose inscription is almost illegible, contained the epitaph of the Apis who died in the reign of Cambyses, and was born, as it seems, in the twenty-fifth year of Aahmes. We possess, the catalogue says, his sarcophagus, sculptured by order of Cambyses. The other is the epitaph of the bull who died in the fourth year of Darius.

“We think,” says M. de Rougé, “that this is the same Apis whom Cambyses, in his fury, wounded when, on his return from the unfortunate Ethiopian[194] expedition, he found the Egyptians abandoning themselves to the rejoicings which accompanied the festivities of the theophany of a new Apis (in 518 B.C.).” If this be so, this Apis must have survived his wound nearly five years.

Darius wished to repair the mistakes of his predecessor, and tried to conciliate the Egyptians. He put to death the satrap Aryandes, whose tyranny was already provoking revolts, and, learning that the Apis had just died, he joined in the public mourning and promised one hundred talents of gold to whoever should find a new Apis. He visited the great temple of Ptah and would have placed his statue there beside that of Sesostris [Ramses II]. The priests told him that he had not yet equalled the exploits of Sesostris, since he had not subdued the Scythians. Darius was not offended at this exhibition of national pride; he answered simply that if he lived as long as Sesostris he would endeavour to equal him. He had a great temple of Amen, whose ruins still exist, built in the oasis of Thebes. Finally, he finished the canal of communication which Seti I and Neku II had wished to establish between the Nile and the Red Sea. According to Diodorus, his memory was venerated by the Egyptians, who placed him in the number of their great legislators.

The kings of Persia who form the XXVIIth Dynasty did not, however, succeed in making themselves accepted by Egypt. They had not, like the Shepherd kings, adopted her religion, her language, her writing, and her manners, and therefore they were always foreigners to her. Their dominion was rarely oppressive, and yet it was interrupted by insurrections which always found a support in the Greek republics.

After one hundred and twenty years, Egypt recovered her independence under three native dynasties, the XXVIIIth, the XXIXth, and the XXXth. But she lost it sixty-four years after, through the cowardice of her king, who fled into Ethiopia without fighting, as Meneptah had fled before the Unclean. Egypt was a second time conquered by the Persians, and Ochus renewed the follies and pillaging of Cambyses (340 B.C.).b

The XXVIIIth Dynasty is regarded as consisting of one king only, since at his death the rule passed to the princes of Mendes. This king was Amen-rut (Amyrtæus), 405-399 B.C., son of Pausiris and grandson of that Amyrtæus who was the ally of Inarus of Libya. Amen-rut revolted against Persia, and became independent on the death of Darius II.

Nia-faa-rut I, prince of Mendes (399-393), succeeded Amen-rut. He and his successors—Haker (393-380), Psamut (380), and Nia-faa-rut II (379)—form the XXIXth Dynasty, and continued, by the alliances with Persia’s enemies, to maintain the native rule of Egypt.

This state of affairs continued under the XXXth Dynasty, which ruled at Sebennytus. Under the first king, Nekht-Hor-heb (Nectanebo I), the Persians, two hundred thousand strong, made a desperate attempt, with the help of the Greek general Iphicrates and twenty thousand of his countrymen, to invade the Delta, but Nectanebo defeated them near Mendes. This victory secured peace and independence to Egypt for a term of years, during which art and commerce revived.

Tachus’ reign was short (364-361), and he had internal as well as external troubles to deal with. He died an exile at the court of Artaxerxes. Nekht-neb-ef (Nectanebo II), 361-340, brought his dynasty and the empire of the Pharoahs, after a duration of over four thousand years, to an end by succumbing to the Persians under Ochus (Artaxerxes III).a

It is not surprising that, after the eight years during which this second Persian dynasty lasted, Alexander should have been received as a liberator[195] and proclaimed son of Amen, that is to say, legitimate successor of the ancient kings of Egypt. The most able of his generals, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, founded a dynasty which may, in spite of its foreign origin, be considered as national as that of the Ramessides or of the Saïtic kings. Greek influence did not make itself felt outside Alexandria. The Lagides respected the religions and customs of Egypt, which became the most important of the Greek kingdoms, while still preserving her original civilisation. She even preserved it under the Roman dominion; and if we did not read the inscriptions, we could never guess that the temples of Esneh, of Edfu, of Denderah, and of Philæ belong to the time of the Lagides, the Cæsars, and the Antonines. Enfolded in the great Roman unity, Egypt did not regret her independence. Alexandria was the second town of the world, the capital of the East. The philosophic movement of which it was the seat entered as an important factor into the elaboration of Christian dogma. But the establishment of the new religion was the death-blow of old Egypt, for a people is dead when it has denied its gods. The edicts of the Christian emperors, ordering the destruction of the temples, dealt the last blow to Egyptian art. Those monuments which were not entirely destroyed were distorted to meet the needs of the new worship.

Then came the Mussulman conquest, which waged further war against the ruins. Finally, in our days, the introduction of Western civilisation into Egypt has done the monuments more harm than all the rest. When the viceroy wishes to build a barrack or a sugar factory, he takes stones from the temples; it saves expense.

Thus is accomplished the sad prediction of the Egyptian philosopher whose works bear the name of Hermes Trismegistus:

“O Egypt, Egypt, there shall remain of thy religion but vague stories which posterity will refuse to believe, and words graven in stone recounting thy piety. The Scythian, the Indian, or some other barbarous neighbour shall dwell in Egypt. The Divinity shall reascend into the heaven. And Egypt shall be a desert, widowed of men and gods.”b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER IX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EGYPTIANS

Customs that differ from our own always seem strange customs. So the Egyptians, viewed from a latter-day European or American standpoint, seem a very strange people. And it being easy to generalise from insufficient data, many notions regarding the Egyptians have become current which appear not to represent that people as they really were. The more the monuments are studied, and the closer we get to the real life of the peoples of antiquity, the less strange these peoples appear.

Indeed, when we come to appreciate their life as it really was, it is surprising how “natural” and human it all appears. Certain peculiarities there were, to be sure, with each people and with each successive age; but in the broad view the peoples of the most remote antiquity are best understood if we think of them as very similar to ourselves in the general sweep of their feelings, desires, and thoughts. Thus, for example, we have seen that the modern Egyptologist has quite dispelled the notion, once prevalent, that the Egyptians were a solemn, morose people, thinking only of the life to come. The truer view, on the other hand, appears to be that they were a peculiarly social, pleasure-loving people. The observance of certain religious rites, which make such an impression upon us because they differ from our own[197] customs in this regard, doubtless did not appear to them to have at all the significance we ascribe to them.

Even in matters which seem to be most strikingly borne out by the records of the monuments, it is easy to entertain a misconception if one presses too closely the idea that the traits thus discovered belong exclusively to a particular people. Thus in the matter of that conservatism which is commonly spoken of as the predominant trait of the national character of the Egyptians. Conservative they surely were. But so is every other living creature that remains long in a single unvarying habitat. The basis of civilisation is the conservatism which leads each generation to cling fast to the customs it had inherited. The history of customs, of language, of religions, in short of all culture, shows how tenaciously every people, after a certain stage, has held to the traditions of its past.

It seems as if a people, like an individual species of animal, reaches sooner or later a state of equilibrium in regard to its environment, and will change no further, except as the environment changes. Now in Egypt the physical environment appears to have changed but little within historic times, and the geographical conditions were such that the people there were afforded a high degree of isolation from outside influences. Hence the observed slowness of change in the customs of this “strange” people.

Yet, even admitting all this, one must not, as we have suggested, press the point of Egyptian conservatism too far. The most casual glance along the line of their history shows many notable changes in their radical customs from age to age, even in the relatively short period open to our inspection. There were times when great pyramids and temples were all the vogue; other times when they were quite ignored.

Even the custom of embalming the dead, so striking a peculiarity, was more or less subject to fluctuating fashions.

One must bear in mind that the period of Egyptian history open to our inspection, from the beginning of secure records till the final overthrow and disappearance of old Egypt as a nation, was, according to an average chronology, only about twenty-five hundred, or three thousand years. Now it is an open question whether, for every Egyptian idea or custom that remained even relatively fixed throughout this period, one could not find current to-day among the most progressive nations of the world an analogous idea or custom, that could prove at least as long a pedigree. To cite but a single illustration, every civilised nation on the globe to-day has its whole being as closely bound up with religious observances as was the being of the Egyptian commonwealth. And with a single exception the religious systems in question have held sway over their subjects, substantially unchanged, for a period as long as the entire sweep of Egyptian history under consideration. Confucianism, Brahminism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism,—each is hoary with the weight of something like thirty centuries; each had its origin in an age of superstition which we are prone to think far inferior to our own “enlightened” time; yet each holds its millions of devotees as rigidly and as inexorably as ever Egyptian was held by the cult of Osiris. Bearing this single illustration in mind, we shall be able to view the Egyptian “conservatism” more truly, as an example of a universal human trait, rather than as the peculiarity of a “strange” people.

Although we have emphasised the view that the Egyptians were very much like other peoples in their fundamental traits of character and habits, it must not be overlooked that there is a pretty sharp line of demarcation[198] to be drawn between the customs of Oriental and Western nations, and that the Egyptians were essentially Orientals.

THE POSITION OF THE KING

One of the most typical characteristics of the Oriental mind is a deference to authority signalised in the ready acceptance of an autocratic government. Doubtless it never occurred to any Egyptian that he might do away with kings altogether. The conception of the king as the head of the state was so deeply impressed on the mind of the people, that the very possibility of a state without an autocratic head could scarcely be conceived.

But in reading of the extreme deference shown to the kings of Egypt, one is likely to gain a misconception of their actual status. We have been taught traditionally to regard the Egyptians as a meek, peace-loving people, profoundly imbued with religious sentiments, and accustomed to look upon their king as almost a god, and to pay him divine honours. Such indeed was doubtless the fact as regards external and tangible conditions, and no doubt the average Egyptian conceived the kingly authority as something altogether sacred. But beneath the surface of court life everywhere there is a counter current which the monarch himself can never disregard, however little its existence is recognised by the generality of his subjects. Professor Erman has emphasised with great astuteness the effect of these hidden influences upon the real life of the Egyptian monarch. He contends that the conditions surrounding the Egyptian court were not different from those about the thrones of other Oriental monarchs, and he points out with great vividness the distinction between the theoretical and the real position of the sovereign. Theoretically, the king is absolutely supreme; his will is law, all the property is his; even the lives of his subjects are at his mercy. But practically, the situation is quite different. Old counsellors of the king’s father are at hand whose bidding is obeyed by the clerks and officials; old rich families must be pandered to; the generals of the troops have a real power that must be respected; and the priests are an ever present restriction upon royal authority. Then there are always relatives who aspire to the throne. Among the large families of Oriental despots it is always something of a lottery as to which child succeeds to power, and there are sure to be mothers who feel that their offspring have been slighted. The familiar stories of the mothers of Solomon and of Cyrus the Younger illustrate the point.

“Even the very potent rulers,” says Professor Erman, “were constantly in dread of their own relatives, as was shown by the protocol of a trial for high treason. The reign of Ramses III was certainly brilliant; the country finally at peace, and the priesthood had been won over by enormous gifts and by temple-building. The aspect of his reign was as bright as could be. And yet there reigned also under him the fearful powers that wrecked each of these dynasties, and it was perhaps due only to a happy chance that he himself escaped. In his own harem treason rose, headed by a distinguished woman of the name of Thi, who was undoubtedly of royal blood, if indeed she were not either his mother or his stepmother. Which prince had been chosen as pretender for the crown, we do not know (a pseudonym is given in the papyrus), but we see how far the matter had gone before discovery; twice the women of the harem wrote to their mothers and brothers, ‘Arouse the people, and bestir the hostile spirits to begin hostilities against the king.’ One of the women wrote then to her brother, who commanded the troops in Ethiopia, and definitely bade him come and fight the king. When one sees[199] how many high officials shared in the treason or knew of it, one appreciates the danger overhanging such an oriental kingdom.”

It will be well to bear this corrective view in mind in considering the position of the Egyptian king as suggested by the monumental inscriptions and pictures. But this view does not at all alter the fact that the people at large were absolutely subservient to the idea of kingship. Certain individuals might strive to overthrow any particular monarch, but it was only that they might set up another. The idea of doing away with monarchy itself never entered their heads. That idea was born upon European soil, long after the power of ancient Egypt had departed.

It is an easy step from monarchs to armies and war methods, although in Egypt the relationship was not so close and intimate as in the case of many other nations. We have seen all along that the Egyptians were not pre-eminently a warlike people, yet, first and last, war entered very largely into their life history as with every other nation, and there was one period under the New Kingdom when, as we have seen, the Egyptians became a conquering people. As the chief monarch of this epoch, Ramses II was greatly given to recording his own deeds in monumental fashion, very full data are at hand for interpreting the war methods of the people during this epoch. There is nothing particularly unique about these methods. The Egyptian army consisted principally of militia armed with bows and javelins. The cavalry, consisting of companies of charioteers, was led by the king himself. Equestrianship had not yet entered into warfare. In sieges, scaling-ladders and battering-rams were used. The monuments show us that the soldiers were drilled to the sound of bugles quite in the modern fashion. In a word, there was nothing particularly to distinguish the war customs of the Egyptians of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties from those of other nations of their time, and these methods, as we shall have occasion to see, were not greatly improved upon until about a thousand years later, when the Macedonian phalanx, as trained by Philip and Alexander along lines first laid out by the great Theban Epaminondas, introduced a new element into warfare.a

The king was the representative of the deity, and his royal authority was directly derived from the gods. He was the head of the religion and of the state; he was the judge and law-giver; and he commanded the army and led it to war. It was his right and his office to preside over the sacrifices, and pour out libations to the gods; and, whenever he was present, he had the privilege of being the officiating high priest.

The sceptre was hereditary; but, in the event of a direct heir failing, the claims for succession were determined by proximity of parentage, or by right of marriage. The king was always either of the military or priestly class, and the princes also belonged to one of them.

The army or the priesthood were the two professions followed by all men of rank, the navy not being an exclusive service; and the “long ships of Sesostris” and other kings were commanded by generals and officers taken from the army, as was the custom of the Turks, and some others in modern Europe to a very recent time. The law, too, was in the hands of the priests; so that there were only two professions. Most of the kings, as might be expected, were of the military class, and during the glorious days of Egyptian history, the younger princes generally adopted the same profession. Many held offices also in the royal household, some of the most honourable of which were fan-bearers on the right of their father, royal scribes, superintendents of the granaries, or of the land, and treasurers of the king; and they were generals of the cavalry, archers, and other corps, or admirals of the fleet.

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Princes were distinguished by a badge hanging from the side of the head, which inclosed, or represented, the lock of hair emblematic of a “son”; in imitation of the youthful god “Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris,” who was held forth as the model for all princes, and the type of royal virtue. For though the Egyptians shaved the head, and wore wigs or other coverings to the head, children were permitted to leave certain locks of hair; and if the sons of kings, long before they arrived at the age of manhood, had abandoned this youthful custom, the badge was attached to their head-dress as a mark of their rank as princes; or to show that they had not, during the lifetime of their father, arrived at kinghood; on the same principle that a Spanish prince, of whatever age, continues to be styled an “infant.”

And it is a curious fact that this ancient people had already adopted the principle, that the king “could do no wrong”: and while he was exonerated from blame, every curse and evil were denounced against his ministers, and those advisers who had given him injurious counsel. The idea, too, of the king “never dying” was contained in their common formula of “life having been given him forever.”

Love and respect were not merely shown to the sovereign during his lifetime, but were continued to his memory after his death; and the manner in which his funeral obsequies were celebrated tended to show, that, though their benefactor was no more, they retained a grateful sense of his goodness, and admiration for his virtues.

The Egyptians are said to have been divided into castes, similar to those of India; but though a marked line of distinction was maintained between the different ranks of society, they appear rather to have been classes than castes, and a man did not necessarily follow the precise occupation of his father. Sons, it is true, usually adopted the same profession or trade as their parent, and the rank of each depended on his occupation; but the children of a priest frequently chose the army for their profession, and those of a military man could belong to the priesthood.

The priests and military men held the highest position in the country after the family of the king, and from them were chosen his ministers and confidential advisers, “the wise counsellors of Pharaoh,” and all the principal officers of state.

The priests consisted of various grades—as the chief priests, or pontiffs; the prophets; judges; sacred scribes; the sphragistæ, who examined the victims for sacrifice; the stolistæ, dressers, or keepers of the sacred robes; the bearers of the shrines, banners, and other holy emblems; the sacred sculptors, draughtsmen, and masons; the embalmers; the keepers of sacred animals; and various officers employed in the processions and other religious ceremonies; under whom were the beadles, and inferior functionaries of the temple. There was also the king’s own priest; and the royal scribes were chosen either from the sacerdotal or the military class. Women were not excluded from certain offices in the temple; they were priestesses of the gods, of the kings and queens, and they had many employments connected with religion.

The long duration of their system, and the feeling with which it was regarded by the people, may also plead some excuse for it; and while the function of judges and the administration of the laws gave them unusual power, they had an apparent claim to those offices, from having been the framers of the codes of morality, and of the laws they superintended. Instead of setting themselves above the king, and making him succumb to their power, like the unprincipled Ethiopian pontiffs, they acknowledged him as the head of the[201] religion and the state; nor were they above the law; no one of them, nor even the king himself, could govern according to his own arbitrary will; his conduct was amenable to an ordeal of his subjects at his death, the people being allowed to accuse him of misgovernment, and to prevent his being buried in his tomb on the day of his funeral.

But though the regulations of the priesthood may have suited the Egyptians in early times, certain institutions being adapted to men in particular states of society, they erred in encouraging a belief in legends they knew to be untrue, instead of purifying and elevating the religious views of the people, and committed the fault of considering their unbending system perfect, and suited to all times. Abuses therefore crept in; credulity, already shamefully encouraged, increased to such an extent that it enslaved the mind, and paralysed men’s reasoning powers; and the result was that the Egyptians gave way to the grossest superstitions, which at length excited universal ridicule and contempt.

Next in rank to the priests were the military. To them was assigned one of the three portions into which the land of Egypt was divided by an edict of Sesostris [Ramses II], in order, says Diodorus, “that those who exposed themselves to danger in the field might be more ready to undergo the hazards of war, from the interest they felt in the country as occupiers of the soil; for it would be absurd to commit the safety of the community to those who possessed nothing which they were interested in preserving.” Each soldier, whether on duty or no, was allowed twelve aruræ of land (a little more than eight English acres), free from all charge; and another important privilege was, that no soldier could be cast into prison for debt; Bocchoris [Bakenranf] the framer of this law, considering that it would be dangerous to allow the civil power the right of arresting those who were the chief defence of the state. They were instructed from their youth in the duties and requirements of soldiers, and trained in all the exercises that fitted them for an active career; and a sort of military school appears to have been established for the purpose.

Each man was obliged to provide himself with the necessary arms, offensive and defensive, and everything requisite for a campaign; and he was expected to hold himself in readiness for taking the field when required, or for garrison duty. The principal garrisons were posted in the fortified towns of Pelusium, Marea, Eileithyia, Heracleopolis, Syene, Elephantine, and other intermediate places; and a large portion of the army was frequently called upon, by the warlike monarchs, to invade a foreign country, or to suppress those rebellions which occasionally broke out in the conquered provinces.

The whole military force, consisting of 410,000, was divided into two corps, the Calasiries and Hermotybies. They furnished a body of men to do the duty of royal guards, 1000 of each being annually selected for that purpose; and each soldier had an additional allowance of “five minæ of bread, with two of beef, and four arusters of wine,” as daily rations, during the period of his service.

The Calasiries (Klashr) were the most numerous, and amounted to 250,000 men, at the time that Egypt was most populous. They inhabited the nomes of Thebes, Bubastis, Aphthis, Tanis, Mendes, Sebennytus, Athribis, Pharbæthus, Thmuis, Onuphis, Anysis, and the Isle of Myecphoris, which was opposite Bubastis; and the Hermotybies, who lived in those of Busiris, Saïs, Chemmis, Papremis, the Isle of Prosopitis, and the half of Natho, made up the remaining 160,000. It was here that they abode[202] while retired from military service, and in these nomes their farms or portions of land were situated, which tended to encourage habits of industry, and keep up a taste for active employment.

Besides the native corps they had mercenary troops, who were enrolled either from the nations in alliance with the Egyptians, or from those who had been conquered by them. They were divided into regiments, sometimes disciplined in the same manner as the Egyptians, though allowed to retain their arms and costume; but they were not on the same footing as the native troops; they had no land, and merely received pay, like other hire soldiers. Strabo speaks of them as mercenaries; and the million of men he mentions must have included these foreign auxiliaries. When formally enrolled in the army, they were considered a part of it, and accompanied the victorious legions on their return from foreign conquest; and they sometimes assisted in performing garrison duty in Egypt, in the place of those Egyptian troops which were left to guard the conquered provinces.

The strength of the army consisted in archers, whose skill contributed mainly to the success of the Egyptians, as of our own ancestors; and their importance is shown by the Egyptian “soldier” being represented as an archer kneeling, often preceded by the word Klashr, converted by Herodotus into Calasiris. They fought either on foot or in chariots, and may therefore be classed under the separate heads of a mounted and unmounted corps; and they constituted a great part of both wings. Several bodies of heavy infantry, divided into regiments, each distinguished by its peculiar arms, formed the centre; and the cavalry [in the later periods] covered and supported the foot.

WEAPONS OF WAR

The offensive weapons of the Egyptians were the bow, spear, two species of javelin, sling, a short and straight sword, dagger, knife, falchion or ensis falcatus, axe or hatchet, battle-axe, pole-axe, mace or club, and the lisan—a curved stick similar to that still in use among the modern Ethiopians. Their defensive arms consisted of a helmet of metal or a quilted head-piece; a cuirass, or coat of armour, made of metal plates, or quilted with metal bands, and an ample shield. The soldier’s chief defence was his shield, which, in length, was equal to about half his height, and generally double its own breadth. It was most commonly covered with bull’s hide having the hair outward, sometimes strengthened by one or more rims of metal, and studded with nails or metal pins, the inner part being a wooden frame.

The Egyptian bow was a round piece of wood, from five to five and a half feet in length, tapering to a point at both ends. Their arrows varied from twenty-two to thirty-four inches in length; some were of wood, others of reed; frequently tipped with a metal head; and winged with three feathers, glued longitudinally, and at equal distances, upon the other end of the shaft, as on our own arrows. Sometimes, instead of the metal head, a piece of hard wood was inserted into the reed, which terminated in a long tapering point.

The spear, or pike, was of wood, between five and six feet in length, with a metal head, into which the shaft was inserted and fixed with nails. The head was of bronze or iron, often very large, and with a double edge. The javelin, lighter and shorter than the spear, was also of wood, and[203] similarly armed with a strong two-edged metal head, of an elongated diamond, or leaf shape, either flat or increasing in thickness at the centre, and sometimes tapering to a very long point.

The sling was a thong of leather, or string plaited; broad in the middle, and having a loop at one end, by which it was fixed upon and firmly held with the hand; the other extremity terminating in a lash, which escaped from the finger as the stone was thrown. The Egyptian sword was straight and short, from two and a half to three feet in length, having generally a double edge, and tapering to a sharp point. It was used for cut and thrust. They had also a dagger.

The axe, or hatchet, was small and simple, seldom exceeding two, or two and a half feet, in length: it had a single blade, and no instance is met with of a double axe resembling the bipennis of the Romans. The blade of the battle-axe was, in form, not unlike the Parthian shield; a segment of a circle, divided at the back into two smaller segments, whose three points were fastened to the handle with metal pins. It was of bronze, and sometimes (as the colour of those in the paintings shows) of steel; and the length of the handle was equal to, or more than double that of, the blade. The pole-axe was about three feet in length, but apparently more difficult to wield than the preceding, owing to the great weight of a metal ball to which the blade was fixed; and required, like the mace, a powerful as well as a skilful arm.

The mace was very similar to the pole-axe, without a blade. It was of wood, bound with bronze, about two feet and a half in length, and furnished with an angular piece of metal, projecting from the handle, which may have been intended as a guard, though in many instances they represent the hand placed above it, while the blow was given. In ancient times, when the fate of a battle was frequently decided by personal valour, the dexterous management of such arms was of great importance; and a band of resolute veterans, headed by a gallant chief, spread dismay among the ranks of an enemy. The curved stick, or club (called lisan, “tongue”), was used by heavy and light-armed troops as well as by archers; and if it does not appear a formidable arm, yet the experience of modern times bears ample testimony to its efficacy in close combat.

The helmet was usually quilted; and though bronze helmets are said to have been worn by the Egyptians, they generally adopted the former, which being thick, and well padded, served as an excellent protection to the head, without the inconvenience of metal in so hot a climate. Some of them descended to the shoulder, others only a short distance below the level of the ear, and the summit, terminating in an obtuse point, was ornamented with two tassels. They were of a green, red, or black colour; and a longer one, which fitted less closely to the back of the head, was fringed at the lower edge with a broad border, and in some instances consisted of two parts, or an upper and under fold. Another, worn by the spearmen, and many corps of infantry and charioteers, was also quilted, and descended to the shoulder with a fringe; but it had no tassels, and, fitting close to the top of the head, it widened towards the base, the front, which covered the forehead, being made of a separate piece, attached to the other part. There is no representation of an Egyptian helmet with a crest, but that of the Shardana, once enemies and afterwards allies of the Pharaohs, shows they were used long before the Trojan war.

The outer surface of the corselet of mail, or coat of scale-armour, consisted of about eleven horizontal rows of metal plates, well secured by[204] bronze pins; and at the hollow of the throat a narrower range of plates was introduced, above which were two more, completing the collar or covering of the neck. The breadth of each plate or scale was little more than an inch, eleven or twelve of them sufficing to cover the front of the body; and the sleeves, which were sometimes so short as to extend less than halfway to the elbow, consisted of two rows of similar plates. Many, indeed most, of the corselets were without collars; in some the sleeves were rather longer, reaching nearly to the elbow, and they were worn both by heavy infantry and bowmen. The ordinary corselet may have been little less than two feet and a half in length; it sometimes covered the thighs nearly to the knee; and in order to prevent its pressing heavily upon the shoulder, they bound their girdle over it, and tightened it at the waist. But the thighs, and that part of the body below the girdle, were usually covered by a kilt, or other robe, detached from the corselet; and many of the light and heavy infantry were clad in a quilted vest of the same form as the coat of armour, for which it was a substitute; and some wore corselets, reaching only from the waist to the upper part of the breast, and supported by straps over the shoulder, which were faced with bronze plates.

Heavy-armed troops were furnished with a shield and spear; some with a shield and mace; and others, though rarely, with a battle-axe, or a pole-axe, and shield. They also carried a sword, falchion, curved stick or lisan, simple mace, or hatchet; which may be looked upon as their side-arms. The light troops had nearly the same weapons, but their defensive armour was lighter; and the slingers and some others fought, like the archers, without shields.

The chariot corps constituted a very large and effective portion of the Egyptian army. Each car contained two persons, like the diphros (δίφρος) of the Greeks. On some occasions it carried three, the charioteer or driver and two chiefs; but this was rarely the case, except in triumphal processions, when two of the princes accompanied the king in their chariot, bearing the regal sceptre, or the flabella, and required a third person to manage the reins. In the field each had his own car, with a charioteer; and the insignia of his office being attached behind him by a broad belt, his hands were free for the use of the bow and other arms. The driver generally stood on the off-side, in order to have the whip-hand free; and this interfered less with the use of the bow than the Greek custom of driving on the near-side; which last was adopted in Greece as being more convenient for throwing the spear. When on an excursion for pleasure, or on a visit to a friend, an Egyptian gentleman mounted alone, and drove himself, footmen and other[205] attendants running before and behind the car; and sometimes an archer used his bow and acted as his own charioteer.

In the battle scenes of the Egyptian temples, the king is represented alone in his car, unattended by any charioteer; with the reins fastened round his body, while engaged in bending his bow against the enemy; though it is possible that the driver was omitted, in order not to interfere with the principal figure. The king had always a “second chariot,” in order to provide against accidents; as Josiah is stated to have had when defeated by Neku; and the same was in attendance on state occasions. The cars of the whole chariot corps contained each two warriors, comrades of equal rank; and the charioteer who accompanied a chief was a person of confidence, as we see from the familiar manner in which one of them is represented conversing with a son of the great Ramses.

In driving, the Egyptians used a whip, like the heroes and charioteers of Homer; and this, or a short stick, was generally employed even for beasts of burden, and for oxen at the plough, in preference to the goad. The whip consisted of a smooth, round wooden handle, and a single or double thong: it sometimes had a lash of leather, or string, about two feet in length, either twisted or plaited; and a loop being attached to the lower end, the archer was enabled to use the bow, while it hung suspended from his wrist.

When a hero encountered a hostile chief, he sometimes dismounted from his car, and substituting for his bow and quiver the spear, battle-axe, or falchion, he closed with him hand to hand, like the Greeks and Trojans described by Homer; and the lifeless body of the foe being left upon the field, was stripped of its arms by his companions. Sometimes a wounded adversary, incapable of further resistance, having claimed and obtained the mercy of the victor, was carried from the field in his chariot; and the ordinary captives, who laid down their arms and yielded to the Egyptians, were treated as prisoners of war, and were sent bound to the rear under an escort, to be presented to the monarch, and to grace his triumph, after the termination of the conflict. The hands of the slain were then counted before him; and this return of the enemy’s killed was duly registered, to commemorate his success, and the glories of his reign.

The Egyptian chariots had no seat; but the bottom part consisted of a frame interlaced with thongs or rope, forming a species of network, in order, by its elasticity, to render the motion of the carriage without springs more easy: and this was also provided for by placing the wheels as far back as possible, and resting much of the weight on the horses, which supported the pole. That the chariot was of wood is sufficiently proved by the sculptures, wherever workmen are seen employed in making it; and the fact of their having more than three thousand years ago already invented and commonly used a form of pole, only introduced into our own country in the nineteenth century, is an instance of the truth of Solomon’s assertion, “there is no new thing under the sun,” and shows the skill of their workmen at that remote time.

BATTLE METHODS

When an expedition was resolved upon against a foreign nation, each province furnished its quotum of men. The troops were generally commanded by the king in person; but in some instances a general was appointed to that post, and intrusted with the sole conduct of the war. A place of rendezvous was fixed, in early times generally at Thebes, Memphis, or Pelusium; and the troops having assembled in the vicinity, remained[206] encamped there, awaiting the leader of the expedition. As soon as he arrived, the necessary preparations were made; a sacrifice was performed to the gods whose assistance was invoked in the approaching conflict; and orders having been issued for their march, a signal was given by sound of trumpet; the troops fell in, and with a profound bow each soldier in the ranks saluted the royal general, and prepared to follow him to the field. The march then commenced, as Clemens and the sculptures inform us, to the sound of the drum; the chariots led the van; and the king, mounted in his car of war, and attended by his chief officers carrying flabella, took his post in the centre, preceded and followed by bodies of infantry armed with bows, spears, or other weapons, according to their respective corps.

On commencing the attack in the open field, a signal was again made by sound of trumpet. The archers drawn up in line first discharged a shower of arrows on the enemy’s front, and a considerable mass of chariots advanced to the charge; the heavy infantry, armed with spears or clubs, and covered with their shields, moved forward at the same time in close array, flanked by chariots and cavalry, and pressed upon the centre and wings of the enemy, the archers still galling the hostile columns with their arrows, and endeavouring to create disorder in their ranks.

Their mode of warfare was not like that of nations in their infancy, or in a state of barbarism; and it is evident, from the number of prisoners they took, that they spared the prostrate who asked for quarter: and the representations of persons slaughtered by the Egyptians, who have overtaken them, are intended to allude to what happened in the heat of action, and not to any wanton cruelty on the part of the victors. Indeed, in the naval fight of Ramses III, the Egyptians, both in the ships and on the shore, are seen rescuing the enemy, whose galley has been sunk, from a watery grave; and the humanity of that people is strongly argued, whose artists deem it a virtue worthy of being recorded among the glorious actions of their countrymen.

Those who sued for mercy and laid down their arms, were spared and sent bound from the field; and the hands of the slain being cut off, and placed in heaps before the king, immediately after the action, were counted by the military secretaries in his presence, who thus ascertained and reported to him the account of the enemy’s slain. Sometimes their tongues, and occasionally other members, were laid before him in the same manner; in all instances being intended as authentic returns of the loss of the foe: for which the soldiers received a proportionate reward, divided among the whole army, the capture of prisoners probably claiming a higher premium, exclusively enjoyed by the captor.

The arms, horses, chariots, and booty, taken in the field or in camp, were also collected, and the same officers wrote an account of them, and presented it to the monarch. The booty was sometimes collected in an open space, surrounded by a temporary wall, indicated in the sculptures by the representation of shields placed erect, with a wicker gate, on the inner and outer face of which a strong guard was posted, the sentries walking to and fro with drawn swords. It was forbidden to the Spartan soldier, when on guard, to have his shield, in order that, being deprived of this defence, he might be more cautious not to fall asleep; and the same appears to have been a custom of the Egyptians, as the watch here on duty at the camp-gates are only armed with swords and maces, though belonging to the heavy-armed corps, who, on other occasions, were in the habit of carrying a shield.

A system of regular fortification was adopted in the earliest times. The form of the fortresses was quadrangular; the walls of crude brick fifteen feet[207] thick, and often fifty feet high, with square towers at intervals along each face. But though some were kept up after the accession of the XVIIIth Dynasty, the practice of fortifying towns seems to have been discontinued, and fortresses or walled towns were not then used, except on the edge of the desert, and on the frontiers where large garrisons were required. To supply their place, the temples were provided with lofty pyramidal stone towers, which, projecting beyond the walls, enabled the besieged to command and rake them, while the parapet-wall over the gateway shielded the soldiers who defended the entrance; and the whole plan of an outer wall of circumvallation was carried out by the large crude brick enclosure of the temenos, within which the temple stood. Each temple was thus a detached fort, and was thought as sufficient a protection for itself and for the town as a continuous wall, which required a large garrison to defend it; and neither Thebes nor Memphis, the two capitals, were walled cities.

The field encampment was either a square, or a parallelogram, with a principal entrance in one of the faces; and near the centre were the general’s tent, and those of the principal officers. The general’s tent was sometimes surrounded by a double rampart or fosse, enclosing two distinct areas, the outer one containing three tents, probably of the next in command, or of the officers on the staff; and the guards slept or watched in the open air. Other tents were pitched outside these enclosures; and near the external circuit, a space was set apart for feeding horses and beasts of burden, and another for ranging the chariots and baggage. It was near the general’s tent, and within the same area, that the altars of the gods, or whatever related to religious matters, the standards, and the military chest, were kept; and the sacred emblems were deposited beneath a canopy, with an enclosure similar to that of the general’s tent.

In attacking a fortified town, they advanced under cover of the arrows of the bowmen; and either instantly applied the scaling-ladder to the ramparts, or undertook the routine of a regular siege: in which case, having advanced to the walls, they posted themselves under cover of testudos, and shook and dislodged the stones of the parapet with a species of battering-ram, directed and impelled by a body of men expressly chosen for this service: but when the place held out against these attacks, and neither a coup de main, the ladder, nor the ram, was found to succeed, they used the testudo for concealing and protecting the sappers, while they mined the place; and certainly, of all people, the Egyptians were the most[208] likely to have recourse to this stratagem of war, from the great practice they had in underground excavations, and in directing shafts through the solid rock.b

SOCIAL CUSTOMS

The subject of manners and customs of the Egyptians has had a peculiar fascination for almost all students of Egyptian history. It is difficult to get away from the feeling that there is something mysterious and occult about Egyptian life, and thousands of people have gazed with mingled admiration and awe upon the monumental remains of this people without caring in the least for the strange-sounding names of the monarchs or for the details of their political history.

From the time of the explorations of the French under Napoleon, which led to the monumental publication edited by Champollionc and his associates, some inklings of the Egyptian life passed into common knowledge. Additional light was thrown upon the subject by the publication of the elaborate “Denkmäler” of Lepsius.h But the first full exposition of the social conditions of ancient Egypt was due to the investigations of Wilkinson, who devoted the best years of his life to the subject, and whose publications are still standard authority. Wilkinson’s elaborate investigation of the monuments and his astute inferences drawn from what he saw enabled him to produce a picture of Egyptian life which the work of more recent investigators has seldom supplanted as to essentials.

Of the more recent Egyptologists few have failed to show an interest in this phase of Egyptian history. Birch,i Maspero,m Mariette,n Chabas,f Budge,g Petrie,o Renoufd—all have dealt with various phases of Egyptian life. Amelia B. Edwardse popularised the knowledge of the specialists in widely read publications, and Georg Ebers,k himself a specialist of the highest standing, gave even wider currency to the most interesting phases of the subject through the medium of his novels. In recent years the field that Wilkinson made his own has been invaded with great success by Professor Adolf Erman of the Berlin University, the worthy successor of Lepsius. Professor Erman has profited by the widest and most critical studies of the Egyptian writings, and through this means he has been enabled to supplement the work of Wilkinson in certain important directions, notably in reference to questions of judicial procedure and the details of governmental administration—subjects into which, unfortunately, a lack of space does not permit us to enter fully here. In his work, Aegypten und Aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, Professor Erman has summarised the sources to which the Egyptologist must go for information as to the life of this people. The writings of the Hebrews, he tells us, have come down to us so much re-edited in later times that they must be accepted with caution as representing Egyptian life of an early period.

The writings of the Greeks, chief among whom in this field is Herodotus, are important as to certain features of the later Egyptian life. Such things as a tourist sees who, “ignorant of the language, travels for a few months in a foreign country,” Herodotus tells us; but very naturally he is unable to supply us with adequate or reliable information regarding those earlier periods of Egyptian history, which have chief interest now because they represent the Egyptian in his time of might and prosperity.

For what we can hope to learn of these earlier times we must turn to the Egyptian monuments themselves. These monumental remains are of four types, namely:

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(1) The inscriptions on temple walls and on monuments.

(2) The royal tombs.

(3) Inscribed papyri representing the literature of the country, and

(4) Papyri of another class representing letters, deeds, and other business documents.

As to the inscriptions, which form numerically so large a proportion of the Egyptian mementos, and which, naturally enough, were first attractive to the investigator, it may be said that as a whole they are most disappointing since their “inscriptions and representations refer almost solely to the worship of the gods, to sacrifices and processions, or they give us bombastic hymns to the gods, or they may perhaps contain the information that such and such a king built this sanctuary of eternal stones for his father the god, who rewarded him for this pious act by granting him a life of millions of years. If, as an exception, we find an inscription telling us of the warlike feats of a ruler, these are related in such official style and stereotyped formula, that little can be gained towards the knowledge of Egyptian life.”

The tombs are much more satisfactory for the present purpose since they contain representations of events in the home life of the deceased, and also various implements, utensils, and trinkets such as he might have used while living. But, unfortunately, it is only the early period of Egyptian life that is depicted in this manner. Moreover, the relics found in the tombs are sometimes misleading, since it apparently became the custom to supply articles ready made for this purpose, rather than to utilise objects of actual utility such as the deceased might really have employed while living.

The papyri which represent the literary remains of ancient Egypt are much less illuminative than might be expected; the greater number of them are magical or religious in character, the most conspicuous example being the Book of the Dead, numberless recensions of which are extant in whole or in part. These supply valuable glimpses of the moral nature of the Egyptians and are of high value to the student of religion and philosophy, but they naturally tell us little of the everyday life of the people.

Of the secular manuscripts the chief portion are school books, intended to incite youthful students at once to virtue and to knowledge, quite after the manner of the modern books, particularly of the last generation. These also fail to give more than incidental glimpses into the real life of the people. As to the value for this purpose of the romances which make up so important a part of the literary remains of the Egyptians, scarcely more can be said. They are romances in the modern acceptance of the term. No school of realists had come to urge the writer to go to contemporary nature for his models; hence, as Erman aptly says, the country described in these writings “is not Egypt, but Fairyland.”

It is always surprising in studying the literature of a past time, to note the facility with which the details of everyday life are omitted. Such a writer as Herodotus tells many interesting things about the manners and customs of Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Scythians even, but he scarcely tells us a word except inferentially, or by way of pointing a contrast, of the everyday life of his own people, the Greeks themselves. Similarly the Egyptian writers, had they visited Greece, would doubtless have had much to say of the strange customs of that “barbaric people”; but it never occurs to them to enter into any details as to the everyday life of their own race.

The reason for this is sufficiently obvious. One writes chiefly for a contemporary audience, and it would be tedious and absurd to fill one’s pages with details regarding things that constitute part of the most elementary[210] knowledge of every reader. What Greek would have cared to listen to Herodotus, had he chosen to fill his pages with prosy dissertations upon the way in which his hearers and readers built their houses, attired themselves, ate their meals, and pursued their everyday vocations? Every line of such a disquisition would have been filled with fascinating interest for posterity, but posterity was but little in the mind of the writer himself. It is precisely the same with the writings of to-day.

If one will consider in this light the first novel that comes to hand, he will be astonished to note how much is taken for granted, and how little even the most realistic story would tell to a person utterly ignorant of our manners and customs about the precise details of our everyday life. Even the newspapers, which seem to thresh out the veriest chaff of life, are mostly guiltless of specific reference to any of those everyday commonplaces, the lack of which in ancient writings fills us with such regret. It is not surprising then, though none the less to be deplored, that the relatively abundant stores of Egyptian literature give after all only an incomplete and imperfect picture of the manners and customs of the people.

To the remaining source of information—the papyri inscribed with letters and business documents—the investigator is able to turn with greater confidence. Here we see the people no longer posing consciously for inspection, but acting their real life and expressing their true sentiments. Just as the modern biographer feels that he is giving the most intimate insight into the character of his subject when he quotes from his personal letters, so these letters and allied documents of the old Egyptians give us perhaps the clearest insight obtainable into the true character of the people, and it is those who have studied these documents most closely who have been most strongly impressed with the similarity between the true characteristics of ancient and modern peoples. What, for example, could seem more modern than the account of the police investigation into the alleged robbery of the tombs of the kings at Memphis, which was held in the time of Ramses IX, of the XXth Dynasty, about the year 1100 B.C.?

Professor Erman’s account, transcribed from the papyri, telling of this investigation, reads for all the world like the police columns of a modern newspaper. It appears that bands of thieves, tempted by the rich spoils always buried with ancient kings, had attempted to force their way into various pyramids where the bodies of these monarchs reposed, and that in some cases they had been successful. Rumours of this sacrilege coming to the attention of the governor of the city, the investigation in question was set on foot, and the divergent opinions expressed by the various authorities, the bickerings and jealousies that are evidenced, and the net result in a verdict which leaves us somewhat in doubt as to the real facts of the case,—all these features have an aspect of modernity that is positively startling. As an interesting sequel to this investigation it may be added that the police were finally obliged to admit themselves no match for the thieves, and that the authorities, despairing of being able to protect the tombs of their ancestors, resorted finally to the strange expedient of removing the royal effigies to a secret cave in the distant mountain of Deir-el-Bahari. In this cave were placed the mummies of a distinguished line of monarchs, including Amenhotep I, Tehutimes II, Tehutimes III, and Seti I, and lastly the great Ramses II himself.

The humiliating step was taken so secretly, and the hiding-place was so carefully guarded from the knowledge of all but a few, that apparently when these died the secret died with them. At any rate, the resting-place[211] of the greatest sovereigns of Egypt was quite unknown for about three thousand years, and it was revealed by accident in our own time. In the year 1881, as described in a preceding section, the authorities entered the crypt which a company of fellahs had discovered about ten years before, but the knowledge of which they had kept secret. Perhaps only once before in the history of archæological discovery had so startling a find been made, or one that aroused such enthusiastic interest in the minds both of specialists and of the general public as when these effigies of the great monarchs were dragged from their tomb. It is only the recent dead to whom sacredness attaches, and the archæologist has no scruples about making a museum exhibit of forms that had once ruled a great people, and which their immediate successors had reverenced as gods.

It will appear from this brief analysis that the remains of Egyptian writings give us in many ways an insight into the life of the people, but that nevertheless our knowledge of that life is much more restricted than could be wished. After the last line of extant writing has been scrutinised and analysed, it still remains true that the chief source of our information regarding the manners and customs of the Egyptians is not to be found in written words but in graphic pictures. Just as the illustrations of a modern magazine would tell posterity, if preserved, far more about our everyday life, than could be gleaned from the pages of text which they supplement, so the delineations of which the Egyptians were so fond, perform a like service. It was chiefly through study of these that Wilkinson was able to reconstruct the life of the people, and it is still to these that the modern investigator must turn.

The manuscripts give us important hints and suggestions, and throw here and there a ray of light into some dark corner, but the chief story is told, not by hieroglyphic or hieratic scrolls, but by actual pictures. These, as has been said, show us the people for a limited period, pursuing the ordinary vocations of life. They show us that the Egyptian gave heed to much the same manner of things that interest the modern. With the aid of these pictures we are able to go with the Egyptian, not merely into the fields and vineyards where he labours, but also into the private dwellings, where we may attend him as he feasts, plays upon musical instruments, dances, and indulges in various sports and games.

We shall be forced to believe that he was very human; very like ourselves in his aspirations and desires, even in his method of their attempted realisation; and yet so strangely do the archaic forms of those delineations impress themselves upon the mind, that we shall never quite free ourselves of the impression that here we have to do with the beings of another and very different world.

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Something of mystery, something of the occult, clings to the Egyptian, however we may try to dispel the illusion. This power the residents of contemporary Egypt had over the old Greek, and this power they still retain. They work a spell upon the mind of whoever contemplates them, which no reasoning can quite exorcise. We know and we believe that these were ordinary mortals like ourselves; and yet, in spite of this knowledge, we feel that there was something quite different about them. And this superstitious feeling perhaps lies at the foundation of the mysterious charm that the Egyptians have exercised upon all succeeding generations.a

THE EGYPTIANS AS SEEN BY HERODOTUS

How the classical world regarded the Egyptians is made clear to us through the pages of Herodotus, who speaks as an eye-witness. It is the Egyptians of the later epoch of whom he speaks, to be sure; but his comments would probably apply with little change to the customs of much earlier periods.

Those Egyptians who live in the cultivated parts of the country, are of all whom I have seen the most ingenious, being attentive to the improvement of the memory beyond the rest of mankind. To give some idea of their mode of life: for three days successively in every month they use purges, vomits, and clysters; this they do out of attention to their health, being persuaded that the diseases of the body are occasioned by the different elements received as food. Besides this, we may venture to assert, that after the Africans there is no people in health and constitution to be compared with the Egyptians. To this advantage the climate, which is here subject to no variation, may essentially contribute: changes of all kinds, and those in particular of the seasons, promote and occasion the maladies of the body. To their bread, which they make with spelt, they give the name of cyllestis; they have no vines in the country, but they drink a liquor fermented from barley; they live principally upon fish, either salted or dried in the sun; they eat also quails, ducks, and some smaller birds, without other preparation than first salting them; but they roast and boil such other birds and fishes as they have, excepting those which are preserved for sacred purposes.

At the entertainments of the rich, just as the company is about to rise from the repast, a small coffin is carried round, containing a perfect representation of a dead body: it is in size sometimes of one but never of more than two cubits, and as it is shown to the guests in rotation, the bearer exclaims, “Cast your eyes on this figure, after death you yourself will resemble it; drink then, and be happy.” Such are the customs they observe at entertainments.

They contentedly adhere to the customs of their ancestors, and are averse to foreign manners. Among other things which claim our approbation, they have a song, which is also used in Phœnicia, Cyprus, and other places, where it is differently named. Of all the things which astonished me in Egypt, nothing more perplexed me than my curiosity to know whence the Egyptians learned this song, so entirely resembling the Linus of the Greeks: it is of the remotest antiquity among them, and they call it Maneros. They have a tradition that Maneros was the only son of their first monarch; and that having prematurely died, they instituted these melancholy strains in his honour, constituting their first, and in earlier times, their only song.

The Egyptians surpass all the Greeks, the Lacedæmonians excepted, in the reverence which they pay to age: if a young person meet his senior, he instantly aside to make way for him; if a senior enter an apartment, the youth[213] always rise from their seats; this ceremony is observed by no other of the Greeks. When the Egyptians meet they do not speak, but make a profound reverence, bowing with the hand down to the knee.

Their habit, which they call calasiris, is made of linen, and fringed at the bottom; over this they throw a kind of shawl made of white wool, but in these vests of wool they are forbidden by their religion either to be buried or to enter any sacred edifice; this is a peculiarity of those ceremonies which are called Orphic and Pythagorean: whoever has been initiated in these mysteries can never be interred in a vest of wool, for which a sacred reason is assigned.

Of the Egyptians it is further memorable that they first imagined what month or day was to be consecrated to each deity; they also, from observing the days of nativity, venture to predict the particular circumstances of a man’s life and death: this is done by the poets of Greece, but the Egyptians have certainly discovered more things that are wonderful than all the rest of mankind. Whenever any prodigy occurs, they commit the particulars to writing and mark the events which follow it: if they afterward observe any similar incident, they conclude that the result will be similar also. The art of divination in Egypt is confined to certain of their deities. There are in this country oracles of Hercules, of Apollo, of Minerva and Diana, of Mars, and of Jupiter; but the oracle of Latona at Buto is held in greater estimation than any of the rest: the oracular communication is regulated by no fixed system, but is differently obtained in different places.

The art of medicine in Egypt is thus exercised: one physician is confined to one disease; there are of course a great number who practise this art; some attend to disorders of the eyes; others to those of the head; some take care of the teeth, others are conversant with all diseases of the bowels; whilst many attend to the cure of maladies which are less conspicuous.

With respect to their funerals and ceremonies of mourning; whenever a man of any importance dies, the females of his family, disfiguring their heads and faces with dirt, leave the corpse in the house and run publicly about, accompanied by their female relations, with their garments in disorder, their breasts exposed, and beating themselves severely: the men on their parts do the same, after which the body is carried to the embalmers.

If an Egyptian or a foreigner be found, either destroyed by a crocodile or drowned in the water, the city nearest which the body is discovered, is obliged to embalm and pay it every respectful attention, and afterward deposit it in some consecrated place: no friend or relation is suffered to interfere; the whole process is conducted by the priests of the Nile, who bury it themselves with a respect to which a lifeless corpse would hardly seem entitled.

To the customs of Greece they express aversion, and, to say the truth, to those of all other nations. This remark applies, with only one exception,[214] to every part of Egypt. Chemmis is a place of considerable note in the Thebaid, it is near Neapolis, and remarkable for a temple of Perseus the son of Danæ. This temple is of a square figure, and surrounded with palm trees. The vestibule, which is very spacious, is constructed of stone, and on the summit are placed two large marble statues. Within the consecrated enclosure stand the shrine and statue of Perseus, who, as the inhabitants affirm, often appears in the country and the temple. They sometimes find one of his sandals, which are of the length of two cubits, and whenever this happens, fertility reigns throughout Egypt. Public games, after the manner of the Greeks, are celebrated in his honour. Upon this occasion they have every variety of gymnastic exercise. The rewards of the conquerors are cattle, vests, and skins. I was once induced to inquire why Perseus made his appearance to them alone, and why they were distinguished from the rest of Egypt by the celebration of gymnastic exercises. They informed me in return, that Perseus was a native of their country, as were also Danaus and Lynceus, who made a voyage into Greece, and from whom, in regular succession, they related that Perseus was descended. This hero visited Egypt for the purpose, as the Greeks also affirm, of carrying from Africa the Gorgon’s head. Happening to come among them, he saw and was known to his relations. The name of Chemmis he had previously known from his mother, and he himself instituted the games which they continued to celebrate.

These which I have described are the manners of those Egyptians who live in the higher parts of the country. They who inhabit the marshy grounds differ in no material instance.

Like the Greeks, they confine themselves to one wife. To procure themselves the means of sustenance more easily, they make use of the following expedient: when the waters have risen to their extremest height, and all their fields are overflowed, there appears above the surface an immense quantity of plants of the lily species, which the Egyptians call the lotus: having cut down these, they dry them in the sun. The seed of the flower, which resembles that of the poppy, they bake and make into a kind of bread; they also eat the root of this plant, which is round, of an agreeable flavour, and about the size of an apple. There is a second species of the lotus, which grows in the Nile, and which is not unlike a rose. The fruit, which grows from the bottom of the root, is like a wasp’s nest: it is found to contain a number of kernels of the size of an olive-stone, which are very grateful, either fresh or dried. Of the byblus, which is an annual plant, after taking it from a marshy place, where it grows, they cut off the tops, and apply them to various uses. They eat or sell what remains, which is nearly a cubit in length. To make this a still greater delicacy, there are many who previously roast it. With a considerable part of this people fish constitutes the principal article of food; they dry it in the sun, and eat it without other preparation.

The inhabitants in the marshy grounds make use of an oil, which they term the kiki, expressed from the Sillicyprian plant. In Greece this plant springs spontaneously without any cultivation, but the Egyptians sow it on the banks of the river, and of the canals; it there produces fruit in great abundance, but of a very strong odour: when gathered, they obtain from it, either by friction or pressure, an unctuous liquid, which diffuses an offensive smell, but for burning it is equal in quality to the oil of olives.

The Egyptians are provided with a remedy against gnats, of which there are a surprising number. As the wind will not suffer these insects to rise[215] far from the ground, the inhabitants of the higher part of the country usually sleep in turrets. They who live in the marshy grounds use this substitute: each person has a net, with which they fish by day, and which they render useful by night. They cover their beds with their nets, and sleep securely beneath them. If they slept in their common habits, or under linen, the gnats would not fail to torment them, which they do not even attempt through a net.

Their vessels of burden are constructed of a species of thorn, which resembles the lotos of Cyrene, and which distils a gum. From this thorn they cut planks, about two cubits square: after disposing these in the form of bricks, and securing them strongly together, they place from side to side benches for the rowers. They do not use timber artificially carved, but bend the planks together with the bark of the byblus made into ropes. They have one rudder, which goes through the keel of the vessel; their mast is made of the same thorn, and the sails are formed from the byblus. These vessels are haled along by land, for unless the wind be very favourable they can make no way against the stream. When they go with the current, they throw from the head of the vessel a hurdle made of tamarisk, fastened together with reeds; they have also a perforated stone of the weight of two talents; this is let fall at the stern, secured by a rope. The name of this kind of bark is baris, which the above hurdle, impelled by the tide, draws swiftly along. The stone at the stern regulates its motion. They have immense numbers of these vessels, and some of them of the burden of many thousand talents.

During the inundation of the Nile, the cities only are left conspicuous, appearing above the waters like the islands of the Ægean Sea. As long as the flood continues, vessels do not confine themselves to the channel of the[216] river, but traverse the fields and the plains. They who then go from Naucratis to Memphis, pass by the pyramids; this, however, is not the usual course, which lies through the point of the Delta, and the city of Cercasorus. If from the sea and the town of Canopus, the traveller desires to go by the plains to Naucratis, he must pass by Anthilla and Archandros.

Of these places Anthilla is the most considerable: whoever may be sovereign of Egypt, it is assigned perpetually as part of the revenues of the queen, and appropriated to the particular purpose of providing her with sandals; this has been observed ever since Egypt was tributary to Persia. I should suppose that the other city derives its name from Archander, the son of Pthius, son-in-law of Danaus, and grandson of Achæus. There may probably have been some other Archander, for the name is certainly not Egyptian.j

So much for the customs of the Egyptians as Herodotus saw them. Abandoning now the contemporary point of view, let us seek a modern interpretation.

HOMES OF THE PEOPLE

Of the various institutions of the ancient Egyptians, says the greatest interpreter of Egyptian customs, none are more interesting than those which relate to their social life; and when we consider the condition of other countries in the early ages when they flourished, from the tenth to the twentieth century before our era, we may look with respect on the advancement they had then made in civilisation, and acknowledge the benefits they conferred upon mankind during their career. For, like other people, they have had their part in the great scheme of the world’s development, and their share of usefulness in the destined progress of the human race; for countries, like individuals, have certain qualities given them, which, differing from those of their predecessors and contemporaries, are intended in due season to perform their requisite duties. The interest felt in the Egyptians is from their having led the way, or having been the first people we know of who made any great progress, in the arts and manners of civilisation; which, for the period when they lived, was very creditable, and far beyond that of other kingdoms of the world. Nor can we fail to remark the difference between them and their Asiatic rivals, the Assyrians, who, even at a much[217] later period, had the great defects of Asiatic cruelty—flaying alive, impaling, and torturing their prisoners; as the Persians, Turks, and other Orientals have done to the present century; the reproach of which cannot be extended to the ancient Egyptians. Being the dominant race of that age, they necessarily had an influence on others with whom they came in contact; and it is by these means that civilisation is advanced through its various stages; each people striving to improve on the lessons derived from a neighbour whose institutions they appreciate, or consider beneficial to themselves. It was thus that the active mind of the talented Greeks sought and improved on the lessons derived from other countries, especially from Egypt; and though the latter, at the late period of the seventh century B.C., had lost its greatness and the prestige of superiority among the nations of the world, it was still the seat of learning and the resort of studious philosophers; and the abuses consequent on the fall of an empire had not yet brought about the demoralisation of after times.

In the treatment of women they seem to have been very far advanced beyond other wealthy communities of the same era, having usages very similar to those of modern Europe; and such was the respect shown to women that precedence was given to them over men, and the wives and daughters of kings succeeded to the throne like the male branches of the royal family. Nor was this privilege rescinded, even though it had more than once entailed upon them the troubles of a contested succession: foreign kings often having claimed a right to the throne through marriage with an Egyptian princess. It was not a mere influence that they possessed, which women often acquire in the most arbitrary Eastern communities; nor a political importance accorded to a particular individual, like that of the Sultana Valideh, the Queen Mother, at Constantinople; it was a right acknowledged by law, both in private and public life.

As in all warm climates, the poorer classes of Egyptians lived much in the open air; and the houses of the rich were constructed to be cool throughout the summer; currents of refreshing air being made to circulate freely through them by the judicious arrangement of the passages and courts.

The houses were built of crude brick, stuccoed and painted with all the combination of bright colour, in which the Egyptians delighted; and a highly decorated mansion had numerous courts, and architectural details derived from the temples. Poor people were satisfied with very simple tenements; their wants being easily supplied, both as to lodging and food; and their house consisted of four walls, with a flat roof of palm branches laid across a split date tree as a beam, and covered with mats plastered over with a thick coating of mud. It had one door, and a few small windows closed by wooden shutters. As it scarcely ever rained, the mud roof was not washed into the sitting-room; and this cottage rather answered as a shelter from the sun, and as a closet for their goods, than for the ordinary purpose of a house in other countries. Indeed, at night the owners slept on the roof, during the greater part of the year; and as most of their work was done out of doors, they[218] might easily be persuaded that a house was far less necessary for them than a tomb.

In their plans the houses of towns, like the villas in the country, varied according to the caprice of the builders. The ground plan, in some of the former, consisted of a number of chambers on three sides of a court, which was often planted with trees. Others consisted of two rows of rooms on either side of a long passage, with an entrance court from the street; and others were laid out in chambers round a central area, similar to the Roman impluvium, and paved with stone, or containing a few trees, a tank, or a fountain, in its centre. Sometimes, though rarely, a flight of steps led to the front door from the street.

Houses of small size were often connected together, and formed the continuous sides of streets; and a courtyard was common to several dwellings. Others of a humbler kind consisted merely of rooms opening on a narrow passage, or directly on the street. These had only a basement story, or ground floor; and few houses exceeded two stories above it. They mostly consisted of one upper floor; and though Diodorus speaks of the lofty houses in Thebes four and five stories high, the paintings show that few had three, and the largest seldom four, including as he does the basement story.b

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CHAPTER X. THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION

Few things are so hard to understand as the religion of an alien race. Indeed, we have but too many illustrations before us constantly that even among the same people, and where ideas are based upon the same authorities, a great divergence of opinion is possible. It is little to be expected, then, that any people should fully understand the religious faith of another people. To add to the difficulty, all the great religions are of Oriental origin and date from a pre-scientific era. Now the essential characteristic both of Oriental and of non-scientific thinking is its vagueness. The Arabic historian, even of the present day, loves to indulge in absurd flights of rhetoric. He sprinkles his pages with grotesque metaphors; he uses the most hyperbolic exaggerations; nor is he particular to avoid the most glaring contradictions; and over it all he throws the veil of hazy mysticism.

If this be true of the Oriental style of composition when applied to staid matter-of-fact recitals, certainly one could expect nothing more definite when the theme is religion. It is no matter for surprise, then, that the sacred books of all great religions are couched in phraseology well calculated to befog the mind of any one who approaches them in any other spirit than that of preconceived faith. This applies no more and no less to the Egyptian than to all other Oriental religions. On the other hand, the data supplied us for the interpretation of the Egyptian faith are far more abundant than are accessible in the case of most other of the great religions of antiquity.

Despite the confusion and vagueness and seeming contradiction that pertain to the Egyptian records, it is probably true that a reasonably correct idea may be formed, at least in general terms, of the evolution and development, no less than of the final status, of the faith which was dominant with the people of the Nile for at least three thousand years. Certainly at least a rough outline of the development of that faith is accessible, and it is the more worthy of presentation because it may be taken at the same time as illustrative of the probable evolution of the faith of other peoples.

The most obvious and striking fact that appeals to the investigator of the Egyptian religion is that enormous numbers of gods hold sway: Ra, Horus, Osiris, Isis, Tmu, Amen, Set,—the list extends itself almost endlessly. Moreover, there is no little confusion as to the precise status of the various gods thus named. To casual inspection it would seem as if the Egyptian of the later time had no very clear idea himself as to how many gods were really included in the hierarchy, or as to the precise identity of the more important ones. And, indeed, such was probably the fact.

The only rational explanation of this confusion appears to be the alleged fact that in an early prehistoric day the various communities of Egypt, not[220] yet consolidated under a single government, had each its own special deity. This local deity, presiding jealously over the interests of its own people, came naturally to have greater or less importance in proportion to the growth or decay of the community over which it presided. Moreover, there must have been a constant tendency, through a shifting of portions of the population from one community to another, to confuse the attributes of the various gods even from the earliest time; since the person who removed from one village to another could not well be expected quite to forget the local god who had formerly been the chief object of his worship. Then as one community or another became dominant after the government was centralised, there must have been a tendency in successive ages to emphasise the importance of one local god or another.

Thus it is clear that in the time of the New Kingdom, when Thebes became the capital and chief centre of the empire, Amen, the local god of Thebes, came to assume an importance hitherto denied him. At last it was even customary to identify Amen with Ra, the greatest god of all, or king of the gods, and the compound name, Amen-Ra, came into use. Various other names were compounded through a similar confusion of attributes, chiefly perhaps through the natural tendency to identify one’s local god with a god of more widely recognised authority. A moment’s reflection makes it clear that the tendency of all this was towards the recognition of a most important central god, who, to a certain extent, ruled over and controlled the hierarchy of the lesser deities. But indeed, it seems clear that from the earliest times the existence of such a supremely powerful god had been everywhere recognised.

It may be doubted even whether it is possible for any religion worthy of the name to fail of an analysis leading to this result. The human mind naturally reaches back from effect to cause, and while it cannot quite clearly grasp the idea of an ultimate single cause, yet neither can it escape the analysis that leads to that idea.

In this view it might be contended that the Egyptian religion, and indeed, every other religion, is monotheistic; certainly its trend was towards monotheism, and certainly this conception best accords with the natural cast of the Oriental mind. It is natural to attempt to visualise, in the spiritual world, a state of things not widely different from the conditions of the actual world, and a people who had no higher conception of the body politic than the thought of an autocracy presided over by a single supreme monarch, would have been strangely untrue to their psychological prejudices had they failed to conceive a like state of things existing in the hierarchy of the gods.

Side by side with this tendency towards monotheism, however, exists always the counter tendency towards a multiplication of deities. The founding of a new city or colony would imply, sooner or later, the creation of a god to preside over the new community. If at first an old god were transplanted for the purpose, local jealousy would be sure to demand a deity whose sole interests in the local community could be expected. Again, the deification of kings and perhaps the other departed notables must of necessity lead to a perpetual enhancement of the list of gods. But this multiplicity of minor deities must not be supposed to be necessarily antagonistic to the essential monotheistic idea in the case of the Egyptian, any more than the multiplication of saints affects the status of the Christian religion.

Over and above all other gods, from first to last, there seems always to have been a conception of Ra, the Uncreated, the autocrat of the heavens.[221] Horus the sun-god, who fought each day in the interest of mankind against the malicious demon Set, or Sutekh, and who was overcome each night only to revive again and renew the combat with each succeeding morning, was a god of great and widely recognised power. Yet it appears that he was not quite identified, as has sometimes been supposed, with the supreme god Ra. To the latter attached a certain intangibility, a certain vagueness inconsistent with the obvious visual reality of the sun-god, or with the being of any other god whose qualities could be explicitly defined. In the very nature of the case the conception of Ra was vague. He represented the last analysis of thought, from which the mind recoils dazed and acknowledging itself baffled.

While we can hardly doubt that this must have been the status of the supreme god Ra in the minds of the most philosophical thinkers of Egypt, yet it is no less certain that there was a constant tendency to associate the qualities of various other gods with the qualities of the supreme deity; in other words, to elevate a lesser deity to the kingship of the gods, somewhat as an important subject might now and again be elevated to the earthly kingship.

The most tangible effort in this direction was made late in the XVIIIth Dynasty by Amenhotep IV, who came afterwards to be known as Khun-aten, “the splendour of the sun-disk,” and whom later generations characterised as the heretic king. This monarch strove to subordinate, if not indeed to eliminate, all the hosts of minor gods by instituting the kingship of the sun-god alone as the supreme, perhaps as the only, deity. The effort was not successful, and the reaction that followed left the old religion more firmly fixed than ever, in its previous beliefs and observances. None the less, the attempt has great historic interest, partly because it shows that the idea of essential monotheism underlying a superficial plurality of gods was current in Egypt, and even attained official recognition at just about the time of the Egyptian captivity of the Children of Israel. It is aside from the present purpose to inquire to what extent the ideas of the latter may have been influenced by this strong current of Egyptian thought.

It has just been said that the reaction against the sun-worship heresy left the old faith more firmly established than before. Never again was a prominent and conspicuous effort made to depart from the ancient faith. Whatever details of variation may have been introduced, the religion as a whole remained unchanged throughout the remaining course of Egyptian history. But this fixity again, far from being peculiar to the Egyptians, is but the history of every great theological system. The very fulcrum of such a system is the reliance upon the authority of the past. The abiding support of a traditional faith is that conservatism which lies at the foundation of all civilisation, and indeed, paradoxical though it seems, of all progress. The conservative, his eye fixed on the past, plants himself firmly in the path of progress, crying “Halt!” to every innovation. Yet during the time of a nation’s vitality this attempted damming up of the stream of progress results in, at most, a temporary stasis, since now and again the stress of new ideas suffices to burst the bonds. But there may come a time when the vitality of a nation is sapped, and when the power of conservatism may avail against all progressive movements.

Such a time came in Egypt at just about the era when the nations of Persia and of Greece were preparing to take hand in the world combat, and from that time on traditional theology, as represented by the priestcraft, was dominant in Egypt, and the once potent civilisation of the Nile Valley[222] ceased to hold its own. The records that outside nations have given us of Egyptian conditions date solely from this later period, and must therefore always be taken with certain reservations. Nevertheless, as regards the more tangible things which they describe, they perhaps are not greatly different from what they would have been if written a thousand years earlier. They tell us of great pyramids that were the tombs of kings, of strange customs of mummifying the dead, and of the worship of animals, so crass in character as to be almost inconceivable to the modern mind. The pyramids, to be sure, dated from an ancient epoch; moreover, they still stand, defiant of time, to testify to the truth of the Greek recitals. The mummies have been preserved in countless numbers, and if animal worship died out with the incoming of a new religion after the Macedonian invasion, there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy, as regards mere externals, of the accounts of it which the Greeks preserve to us.

We shall do well, then, to turn to the pages of Herodotus and Diodorus for a description of the external observances practised by the Egyptians, remembering always that this is the testimony of alien, even though sympathetic, witnesses, but scarcely doubting that it is testimony at least as unprejudiced as any that a modern would-be interpreter can draw from the monumental records.

The aggregate impression which one gathers, from even a casual consideration of the subject, is that the religion of the Egyptians, despite its very striking peculiarities of external observances, differed singularly little from the other great religions in its essentials. It was polytheistic, but with an underlying conception of monotheism. Its chief observances implied an abiding faith in the immortality of the soul. Its fundamental teachings were essentially moral according to the best light of the time. And if, as viewed by an outsider, it seemed to develop a grotesque ritual and a jumble of vague theistic conceptions, in these regards, also, it can hardly claim to be unique among Oriental religions.a

RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND OFFERINGS

Herodotus gives an interesting description of certain religious observances as practised in his day. He says:

The priests of the gods, who in other places wear their hair long, in Egypt wear it short. It is elsewhere customary, in cases of death, for those who are most nearly related, to cut off their hair in testimony of sorrow; but the Egyptians, who at other times have their heads closely shorn, suffer the hair on this occasion to grow. Other nations will not suffer animals to approach the place of their repast; but in Egypt they live promiscuously with the people. Wheat and barley are common articles of food in other countries; but in Egypt they are thought mean and disgraceful; the diet here consists principally of spelt, a kind of corn which some call zea. Their dough they knead with their feet; whilst in the removal of mud and dung, they do not scruple to use their hands. Male children, except in those places which have borrowed the custom from hence, are left in other nations as nature formed them; in Egypt they are circumcised. The men have two vests, the women only one. In opposition to the customs of other nations, the Egyptians fix the ropes to their sails on the inside. The Greeks, when they write or reckon with counters, go from the left to the right, the Egyptians from right to left; notwithstanding which they persist in affirming that the Greeks write to the left, but they themselves always to the right. They have two[223] sorts of letters, one of which is appropriated to sacred subjects, the other used on common occasions [the hieroglyphic and hieratic characters].

Their veneration of their deities is superstitious to an extreme: one of their customs is to drink out of brazen goblets, which it is the universal practice among them to cleanse every day. They are so regardful of neatness, that they wear only linen, and that always newly washed; and it is from the idea of cleanliness, which they regard much beyond comeliness, that they use circumcision. Their priests every third day shave every part of their bodies, to prevent vermin or any species of impurity from adhering to those who are engaged in the service of the gods: the priesthood is also confined to one particular mode of dress; they have one vest of linen and their shoes are made of the byblus [papyrus]; they wash themselves in cold water twice in the course of the day, and as often in the night; it would indeed be difficult to enumerate their religious ceremonies, all of which they practise with superstitious exactness. The sacred ministers possess in return many and great advantages: they are not obliged to consume any part of their domestic property; each has a portion of the sacred viands ready dressed, assigned him, besides a large and daily allowance of beef and of geese; they have also wine, but are not permitted to feed on fish.

Beans are sown in no part of Egypt, neither will the inhabitants eat them, either boiled or raw; the priests will not even look at this pulse, esteeming it exceedingly unclean. Every god has several attendant priests, and one of superior dignity, who presides over the rest; when any one dies he is succeeded by his son.

They esteem bulls as sacred to Epaphus, which previously to sacrifice, are thus carefully examined: if they can but discover a single black hair in his body, he is deemed impure; for this purpose a priest is particularly appointed, who examines the animal as it stands, and as reclined on its back: its tongue is also drawn out, and he observes whether it be free from those blemishes which are specified in their sacred books, and of which I shall speak hereafter. The tail also undergoes examination, every hair of which must grow in its natural and proper form: if in all these instances the bull appears to be unblemished, the priest fastens the byblus round his horns; he then applies a preparation of earth, which receives the impression of his seal, and the animal is led away; this seal is of so great importance, that to sacrifice a beast which has it not, is deemed a capital offence.

I proceed to describe their mode of sacrifice: Having led the animal destined and marked for the purpose, to the altar, they kindle a fire; a libation of wine is poured upon the altar; the god is solemnly invoked, and the victim then is killed; they afterwards cut off his head, and take the skin from the carcass; upon the head they heap many imprecations: such as have a market-place at hand carry it there, and sell it to the Grecian traders; if they have not this opportunity, they throw it into the river. They devote the head, by wishing that whatever evil menaces those who sacrifice, or Egypt in general, it may fall upon that head.[11] This ceremony respecting the head of the animal, and this mode of pouring a libation of wine upon the altar, is indiscriminately observed by all the Egyptians: in consequence of the above, no Egyptian will on any account eat of the head of a beast. As to the examination of the victims, and their ceremony of burning them, they have different methods, as their different occasions of sacrifice require.

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Of that goddess whom they esteem the first of their deities, and in whose honour their greatest festival is celebrated, I shall now make more particular mention. After the previous ceremony of prayers, they sacrifice an ox; they then strip off the skin, and take out the intestines, leaving the fat and the paunch; they afterwards cut off the legs, the shoulders, the neck, and the extremities of the loin; the rest of the body is stuffed with fine bread, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, and various aromatics; after this process they burn it, pouring upon the flame a large quantity of oil: whilst the victim is burning, the spectators flagellate themselves, having fasted before the ceremony; the whole is completed by their feasting on the residue of the sacrifice. All the Egyptians sacrifice bulls without blemish, and calves; the females are sacred to Isis, and may not be used for this purpose. This divinity is represented under the form of a woman, and, as the Greeks paint Io, with horns upon her head; for this reason the Egyptians venerate cows far beyond all other cattle. Neither will any man or woman among them kiss a Grecian, nor use a knife, or spit, or any domestic utensil belonging to a Greek, nor will they eat even the flesh of such beasts as by their law are pure, if it has been cut with a Grecian knife. If any of these cattle die, they thus dispose of their carcasses: the females are thrown into the river, the males they bury in the vicinity of the city, and by way of mark, one and sometimes both of the horns are left projecting from the ground: they remain thus a stated time, and till they begin to putrefy, when a vessel appointed for this particular purpose is dispatched from Prosopitis, an island of the Delta, nine schæni in extent, and containing several cities. Atarbechis, one of these cities, in which is a temple of Venus, provides the vessels for this purpose, which are sent to the different parts of Egypt: these collect and transport the bones of the animals, which are all buried in one appointed place. This law and custom extends to whatever cattle may happen to die, as the Egyptians themselves put none to death.

Those who worship in the temple of the Theban Jupiter, or belong to the district of Thebes, abstain from sheep, and sacrifice goats. The same deities receive in Egypt different forms of worship; the ceremonies of Isis and of Osiris, who they say is no other than the Grecian Bacchus, are alone unvaried; in the temple of Mendes, and in the whole Mendesian district, goats are preserved and sheep sacrificed. The veneration of the Mendesians for these animals, and for the males in particular, is equally great and universal: this is also extended to goat-herds. There is one he-goat more particularly honoured than the rest, whose death is seriously lamented by the whole district of the Mendesians. In the Egyptian language the word Mendes is used in common for Pan and for a goat.

The Egyptians regard the hog as an unclean animal, and if they casually touch one they immediately plunge themselves, clothes and all, into the water. This prejudice operates to the exclusion of all swine-herds, although natives of Egypt, from the temples: with people of this description, a connection by marriage is studiously avoided, and they are reduced to the necessity of intermarrying among those of their own profession. The only deities to whom the Egyptians offer swine, are Bacchus and Luna; to these they sacrifice them when the moon is at the full, after which they eat the flesh. Why they offer swine at this particular time, and at no other, the Egyptians have a tradition among themselves, which delicacy forbids me to explain. The following is the mode in which they sacrifice this animal to Luna: as soon as it is killed, they cut off the extremity of the tail, which, with the[225] spleen and the fat, they enclose in the caul, and burn; upon the remainder, which at any other time they would disdain, they feast at the full moon, when the sacrifice is performed. They who are poor make figures of swine with meal, which having first baked, they offer on the altar.

On the day of the feast of Bacchus, at the hour of supper, every person, before the door of his house, offers a hog in sacrifice. The swine-herd of whom they purchased it, is afterwards at liberty to take it away. Except this sacrifice of the swine, the Egyptians celebrate the feast of Bacchus in the same manner as the Greeks.b

GIFTS AND RICHES OF TEMPLES

There are certain very practical features of the administration of the temples which Herodotus quite overlooked, but which have come to light through the efforts of modern scholarship. Some of these are admirably pointed out by Professor Erman:

Not the least of the circumstances which lent the priesthood of the New Kingdom that power which finally triumphed over royalty itself, was their wealth. For this they were indebted to gifts, and, indeed, so far as we can see, chiefly to gifts from the kings; it is only now and then that we find a private person making an endowment. From the earliest times all the rulers are busy in this fatal direction (some, like the pious kings of the Vth dynasty, were more so than others); even under the old kingdom many temples had attained such prosperity that they even possessed military forces of their own.

The golden age for the temples began with the Asiatic campaigns of the XVIIIth Dynasty. An approximate idea of the gifts which Tehutimes III made to Amen may be obtained from the remains of an inscription at Karnak; fields and gardens of the choicest of the South and North, landed property on high ground, with sweet trees growing on it, milch cows, and bullocks, and quantities of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli; then captive Asiatics and negroes,—there were at least 878 souls—men, women, and children,—who had to fill the god’s granaries, spin and weave, and till his fields for him. Finally he settled upon Amen three of the towns conquered by him, En-heugsa, Yenu-amu, and Hurenkhara, which had to pay an annual tribute to the god. Since almost every sovereign of the New Kingdom boasts in nearly the same words of having exhibited his piety in a practical fashion, one is first inclined to take this constant self-glorification of the Pharaohs, as so much in the Egyptian text has to be taken, for a conventional empty phrase. But in that case, our doubt would go too far, since at least some of the kings did make to the temples gifts which surpass all that might be considered probable. The lucky chance which has preserved for us the great Harris papyrus places us in a position to bring forward the evidence of figures. King Ramses III left behind after his death a comprehensive manifesto, in which he enumerates in detail all that he had done for the sanctuaries of his country during the thirty-one years of his reign. The numbers of these lists are evidently taken from the accounts of the state and of the different temples, and are consequently deserving of credit.

This great record, which fills a papyrus roll 1333 feet long, with seventy-nine pages of a large size, is divided into five sections, according to the recipients of the gifts. The first contains the gifts to the Theban temples, then follows the gifts to Heliopolis, those to Memphis, and those to the[226] smaller sanctuaries of the country; finally, the fifth section contains the total of all the donations.

Taking together the similar items amongst the donations, tributes, and sacrificial offerings, we have then the chief items of the sum of the income of the Egyptian temples during one and thirty years, somewhat as follows: about 1 ton (1015 kg. 336. g.) of gold; about 3 tons (2993 kg. 964 g.) silver and the value of silver; 940 kg. 3 g. of black bronze; about 13 tons (13,059 kg. 865 g.) bronze; about 14 lbs. (7 kg. 124 g.) precious stones; 1,093,803 pieces of valuable stone; 169 towns, 1,071,780 plots of arable land; 514 vineyards and orchards; 178 ships; 133,433 slaves; 514,968 head of cattle (especially oxen); 680,714 geese; 494,800 fish; 2,382,605 fruits: 5,740,352 sacks of corn; 6,744,428 loaves of bread; 256,460 jars of wine; 466,303 jars of beer; 368,461 jars of incense, honey, oil, etc., 1,933,766 items.

In order to give the reader some idea of the large sums here dealt with, I may remark that even in our own time, when the value of the metals has so greatly decreased, the quantity of precious metals in question would be worth about four million marks (about $1,000,000, or £200,000). And it must not be forgotten that on those same six or seven millions of Egyptians who, in addition to the state taxes, had to produce these treasures “ad majorem dei gloriam,” there devolved at the same time the building of the temples of Medinet Habu, Karnak, Tel-el-Tehudeh, and others. Truly the forces of the little country were unduly strained for the unproductive purposes of worship.

But what made these conditions so completely unsound was the disproportionate division of the treasure expended. If the many temples of the country had participated equally in these gifts, no one of them would have attained to an extreme height of power and wealth. But, probably on political grounds, which we can now no longer determine, Ramses III favoured one temple in the most partial manner, and that the very one to which his predecessors had already conferred the richest endowments. This was the sanctuary of the Theban Amen, which carried off the lion’s share of all the gifts of the generous sovereign.

Thus, for example, of the total 113,433 slaves which Ramses gave away, no fewer than 86,486 fell to Amen; of the 493,386 head of cattle, 421,362; of the 1,071,780 divisions of land, 898,168; of the 514 vineyards, 433; and so on: the 2756 gold and silver images of the gods were destined exclusively for him, and so were the nine foreign towns; it must even here be regarded as an exceptionally mean gift, when he received only 56 of the 160 Egyptian towns. On the whole, it will scarcely be wrong to assume that of the total of the gifts, three-fourths found their way into Amen’s treasuries; of the 86,486 slaves, the god Khonsu and the goddess Mut received in all only 3908.

Since, then, the earlier sovereigns of the New Kingdom had also laboured to fill the treasury of their favourite god Amen, this god ended by possessing resources, beside which those of all the other gods shrank to nothing, and again it is the document of Ramses III which enables us to estimate it in figures.

If we compare these figures with one another, we cannot doubt that under the XXth Dynasty the Amen of Thebes possessed at least five times as much property as the sun-god of Heliopolis, and ten times (if not far more) as much as Ptah of Memphis. And yet these latter were the two gods who had formerly been the most distinguished, and certainly also the[227] richest, in the whole country. The enormous magnitude of temple property like this, of course, demanded a much more complicated machinery for its administration than had been required for the modest possessions of the ancient sanctuaries. Even one of the larger temples of the middle kingdom could have its treasure, its granaries, and its affairs of writing carried on by certain members of its priestly college, for the labours which they entailed could be executed side by side; beyond the inferior servants there had been scarcely any regular officials in these temples. It is quite otherwise in the New Kingdom; the priests can no longer manage the administration unaided, and call in a host of officials to help. This is true of all the temples, but, of course, especially so of that of the Theban Amen. This god possessed a general administration of the house, i.e. the temple furniture; he has special departments for the treasure, for the lands, for the barns, for the oxen, and for the peasants, and every one of these departments has its overseer of princely rank, and its scribe. There is also a superior chief scribe for Amen, who keeps the roll of the sanctuary’s possessions. And since in a great temple of the New Kingdom the erection of new buildings and the works of restoration are never interrupted, he has also his own administration of construction, to which all works are subordinated; of course, provision is also made for the required number of labourers and craftsmen of all kinds, from the painter down to the stone-mason. To secure order in the temple and on the estates, the god keeps his own military forces with superior and inferior officers, and since amongst his dependents very secular proceedings often take place, he has also his own prison. Of the large staff of subordinate officials, who must have existed in such an administration, we, of course, know very little, as this class keeps out of sight. Still such people as the overseer of the sacrificial storehouses, doorkeepers of every description, and barbers have left us monuments, and must consequently have enjoyed a certain prosperity.

What we have here stated respecting the temple administration would be of still greater interest if we knew the mutual relations of all these offices, and how it came to pass that we find, now these, now those, united in the same hands. That the high priest arrogated to himself, at least nominally, now one, now another, especially important office, is comprehensible enough; but it remains unexplained how, for instance, the management of the constructions can be at one time handed over as a secondary function to the chief scribe, and another time to the superintendent of barns, the more since the former presided in addition over the god’s bulls, and the latter has the treasury under his protection, and “seals all contracts in Amen’s temple.” It is, moreover, a characteristic circumstance that these high temple officials are frequently also state functionaries; the gradual transformation of the old kingdom into the priestly state of the XXIst Dynasty, which is ruled by the high priests of Amen, already distinctly reveals itself in such dual officers. Still, the kingly power did not submit to the spiritual without resistance, and it may be that both the reformation of Khun-aten and the disturbances at the end of the XIXth Dynasty, when no sacrifices were brought into the temples, were in good part called forth by the effort to oppose a barrier to the individual and increasing power of the Amen priesthood. It must be owned that the latter issued from both trials stronger than ever.c

The opulence of the Egyptian temples is the more amazing for being lavished upon mere beasts. This animal-worship deeply impressed classical authors. The account of Diodorus is particularly full and vivid.

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DIODORUS ON ANIMAL WORSHIP

The Adoration and Worshipping of Beasts among the Egyptians seems justly to many a most strange and unaccountable thing, and worthy Enquiry; for they worship some Creatures even above measure, when they are dead as well as when they are living; as Cats, Ichneumons, Dogs, Kites, the Bird Ibis, Wolves and Crocodiles, and many other such like. The Cause of which I shall endeavour to give, having first premis’d something briefly concerning them. And first of all, they dedicate a piece of Land to every kind of Creature they adore, assigning the Profits for feeding and taking care of them. To some of these Deities the Egyptians give Thanks for recovering their Children from Sickness, as by shaving their Heads, and weighing the Hair, with the like Weight of Gold or Silver, and then giving that Mony to them that have the Care of the Beasts. To the Kites, while they are flying they cry out with a loud Voice, and throw pieces of Flesh for them upon the Ground till such time as they take it. To the Cats and Ichneumons they give Bread soakt in Milk, stroaking and making much of them, or feed them with pieces of Fish taken in the River Nile. In the same manner they provide for the other Beasts Food according to their several kinds.

They are so far from not paying this Homage to their Creatures, or being asham’d of them, that on the contrary they glory in them, as in the highest Adoration of the Gods, and carry about special Marks and Ensigns of Honour for them through City and Country; upon which Account those that have the Care of the Beasts (being seen afar off) are honour’d and worshipp’d by all by falling down upon their Knees. When any one of them dye they wrap it in fine Linen, and with Howling beat upon their Breasts, and so carry it forth to be salted, and then after they have anointed it with the Oyl of Cedar and other things, which both give the Body a fragrant Smell and preserve it a long time from Putrefaction, they bury it in a secret place. He that wilfully kills any of these Beasts, is to suffer Death; but if any kill a Cat or the Bird Ibis, whether wilfully or otherwise, he’s certainly drag’d away to Death by the Multitude, and sometimes most cruelly without any formal Tryal or Judgment of Law. For fear of this, if any by chance find any of these Creatures dead, they stand aloof, and with lamentable Cries and Protestations tell every body that they found it dead.

And such is the religious Veneration imprest upon the Hearts of Men towards these Creatures, and so obstinately is every one bent to adore and worship them, that even at the time when the Romans were about making a League with Ptolemy, and all the People made it their great Business to caress and shew all Civility and Kindness imaginable to them that came out of Italy, and through Fear strove all they could that no Occasion might in the least be given to disoblige them or be the Cause of a War, yet it so happ’ned that upon a Cat being kill’d by a Roman, the People in a Tumult ran to his Lodging, and neither the Princes sent by the King to dissuade them, nor the Fear of the Romans could deliver the Person from the Rage of the People, tho’ he did it against his Will; and this I relate not by Hear-say, but was myself an Eye-witness of it at the time of my Travels into Egypt. If these things seem incredible and like to Fables, those that we shall hereafter relate will look more strange. For it’s reported, that at a time when there was a Famine in Egypt, many were driven to that strait, that by turns they fed one upon another; but not a Man was accused to have in the least tasted of any of these sacred Creatures. Nay, if a Dog be found dead in a House, the whole Family shave their Bodies all over, and make great[229] Lamentation; and that which is most wonderful, is, That if any Wine, Bread or any other Victuals be in the House where any of these Creatures die, it’s a part of their Superstition, not to make use of any of them for any purpose whatsoever. And when they have been abroad in the Wars in foreign Countries, they have with great Lamentation brought with them dead Cats and Kites into Egypt, when in the mean time they have been ready to starve for want of Provision.

Moreover what Acts of Religious Worship they perform’d towards Apis in Memphis, Mnevis in Heliopolis, the Goat in Mendes, the Crocodile in the Lake of Mœris, and the Lyon kept in Leontopolis, and many other such like, is easie to describe, but very difficult to believe, except a Man saw it. For these Creatures are kept and fed in consecrated Ground inclos’d, and many great Men provide Food for them at great Cost and Charge; for they constantly give them fine Wheat-Flower, Frumenty, Sweet-meats of all sorts made up with Honey, and Geese sometimes rosted, and sometimes boyl’d; and for such as fed upon raw Flesh, they provide Birds. To say no more, they are excessive in their Costs and Charges in feeding of these Creatures; and forbear not to wash them in hot Baths, to anoint them with the most precious Unguents, and perfume them with the sweetest Odours. They provide likewise for them most rich Beds to lye upon, with decent Furniture, and are extraordinary careful about their generating one with another, according to the Law of Nature. They breed up for every one of the Males (according to their Kinds) the most beautiful She-mate, and call them their Concubines or Sweet-hearts, and are at great Costs in looking to them.

When any of them dye, they are as much concern’d as at the Deaths of their own Children, and lay out in Burying of them as much as all their Goods are worth, and far more. For when Apis through Old Age dy’d at Memphis after the Death of Alexander, and in the Reign of Ptolemy Lagus, his Keeper not only spent all that vast Provision he had made, in burying of him, but borrow’d of Ptolemy Fifty Talents of Silver for the same purpose. And in our time some of the Keepers of these Creatures have lavisht away no less than a Hundred Talents in the maintaining of them. To this may be further added, what is in use among them concerning the sacred Ox, which they call Apis. After the splendid Funeral of Apis is over, those Priests that have the Charge of the Business, seek out another Calf, as like the former as possibly they can find; and when they have found one, an end is put to all further Mourning and Lamentation; and such Priests as are appointed for that purpose, lead the young Ox [or Bull] through the City of Nile, and feed him Forty Days. Then they put him into a Barge, wherein is a Golden Cabbin, and so transport him as a God to Memphis, and place him in Vulcan’s Grove. During the Forty Days before mention’d, none but Women are admitted to see him, who being plac’d full in his view, pluck up their Coats. After, they are forbad to come into Sight of this New God. For the Adoration of this Ox, they give this Reason. They say that the Soul of Osiris pass’d into an Ox; and therefore whenever the Ox is Dedicated, to this very Day the Spirit of Osiris is infus’d into one Ox after another to Posterity. But some say, that the Members of Osiris (who was kill’d by Typhon) were thrown by Isis into an Ox made of Wood, cover’d with Ox-Hides, and from thence the City Busiris was so call’d. Many other things they fabulously report of Apis, which would be too tedious particularly to relate. But in as much as all that relate to this Adoration of Beasts are wonderful and indeed incredible, it’s very difficult to find out the true Causes and Grounds of this Superstition.

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We have before related, that the Priests have a private and secret account of these things in the History of the Gods; but the Common People give these Three Reasons for what they do. The First of which is altogether Fabulous, and agrees with the old Dotage: For they say, that the First Gods were so very few, and Men so many above them in number, and so wicked and impious, that they were too weak for them, and therefore transform’d themselves into Beasts, and by that means avoided their Assaults and Cruelty. But afterwards they say that the Kings and Princes of the Earth (in gratitude to them that were the first Authors of their well-being) directed how carefully those Creatures whose shapes they had assum’d should be fed while they were alive, and how they were to be Buried when they were dead.

Another Reason they give is this: The antient Egyptians, they say, being often defeated by the Neighbouring Nations, by reason of the disorder and confusion that was among them in drawing up of their Battalions, found out at last the way of Carrying Standards or Ensigns before their Several Regiments; and therefore they painted the Images of these Beasts, which now they adore, and fixt ’em at the end of a Spear, which the Officers carry’d before them, and by this means every Man perfectly knew the Regiment he belong’d unto; and being that by the Observation of this good Order and Discipline, they were often Victorious, they ascrib’d their Deliverance to these Creatures; and to make to them a grateful Return, it was ordain’d for a Law, that none of these Creatures, whose Representations were formerly thus carry’d, should be kill’d, but religiously and carefully ador’d, as is before related.

The Third Reason alledg’d by them, is the Profit and Advantage these Creatures bring to the common support and maintenance of Humane Life. For the Cow is both serviceable to the Plow, and for breeding others for the same use. The Sheep yeans twice a Year, and yields Wool for Cloathing and Ornament, and of her Milk and Cream are made large and pleasant Cheeses. The Dog is useful both for the Guard of the House, and the pleasure of Hunting in the Field, and therefore their God whom they call Anubis, they represent with a Dog’s Head, signifying thereby that a Dog was the Guard both to Osiris and Isis. Others say, that when they fought for Osiris, Dogs guided Isis, and by their barking and yelling (as kind and faithful Associates with the Inquisitors) drove away the wild Beasts, and diverted others that were in their way; and therefore in celebrating the Feast of Isis, Dogs lead the way in the Procession. Those that first instituted this Custom, signifying thereby the ancient kindness and good Service of this Creature. The Cat likewise is very serviceable against the Venemous Stings of Serpents, and the deadly Bite of the Asp.

The Ichneumon secretly watches where the Crocodile lays her Eggs, and breaks them in pieces, and that he does with a great deal of eagerness, by natural instinct, without any necessity for his own support; and if this Creature were not thus serviceable, Crocodiles would abound to that degree, that there were no Sailing in Nile: Yea, the Crocodiles themselves are destroy’d by this Creature in a wonderful and incredible manner. For the Ichneumon rouls himself in the Mud, and then observing the Crocodile sleeping upon the Bank of the River with his Mouth wide open, suddenly whips down through his Throat into his very Bowels, and presently gnaws his way through his Belly, and so escapes himself, with the Death of his Enemy.

Among the Birds, the Ibis is serviceable for the destroying of Snakes, Locusts and the Palmer Worm. The Kite is an Enemy to the Scorpions,[231] horn’d Serpents, and other little Creatures, that both bite and sting Men to Death. Others say, that this Bird is Deify’d, because the Augurs make use of the swift flight of these Birds in their Divinations. Others say, that in ancient Time, a Book bound about with a Scarlet Thred (wherein were written all the Rites and Customs of Worshipping of the Gods) was carry’d by a Kite, and brought to the Priests at Thebes: For which Reason the Sacred Scribes wore a red Cap with a Kite’s Feather in it. The Thebans worship the Eagle, because she seems to be a Royal Bird, and to deserve the Adoration due to Jupiter himself. They say, the Goat was accounted amongst the number of the Gods as Priapus is honour’d among the Grecians: For this Creature is exceeding Lustful, and therefore is to be highly honour’d. By this Representation they would signify their Gratitude to the Gods, for the Populousness of their Country.

The Sacred Bulls Apis and Mnevis (they say) they honour as Gods by the Command of Osiris, both for their Usefulness in Husbandry, and likewise to keep up an honourable and lasting Memory of those that first found out Bread-corn and other Fruits of the Earth. But however, it’s lawful to sacrifice red Oxen, because Typhon seem’d to be of that Colour, who treacherously murder’d Osiris, and was himself put to Death by Isis for the Murther of her Husband. They report likewise, that anciently Men that had red Hair, like Typhon, were sacrifis’d by the Kings at the Sepulcher of Osiris. And indeed, there are very few Egyptians that are red, but many that are Strangers: And hence arose the Fable of Busiris his Cruelty towards Strangers amongst the Greeks, not that there ever was any King call’d Busiris; but Osiris his Sepulcher was so call’d in the Egyptian Language. They say they pay divine Honour to Wolves, because they come so near in their Nature to Dogs, for they are very little different, and mutually ingender and bring forth Whelps.

They give likewise another reason for their Adoration, but most fabulous of all other; for they say, that when Isis and her Son Orus were ready to joyn Battle with Typhon, Osiris came up from the Shades below in the form of a Wolf, and assisted them, and therefore when Typhon was kill’d the Conquerors commanded that Beast to be worshipp’d, because the Day was won presently upon his Appearing. Some affirm, that at the time of the Irruption of the Ethiopians into Egypt, a great Number of Wolves flockt together, and drove the invading Enemy beyond the City Elaphantina, and therefore that Province is call’d Lycopolitana; and for these Reasons came these Beasts before mention’d, to be thus ador’d and worshipped.

Now it remains, that we speak of Deifying the Crocodile, of which many have inquir’d what might be the Reason; being that these Beasts devour Men, and yet are ador’d as Gods, who in the mean time are pernicious Instruments of many cruel Accidents. To this they answer, that their Country is not only defended by the River, but much more by the Crocodiles; and therefore the Theeves out of Arabia and Africa being affraid of the great number of these Creatures, dare not pass over the River Nile, which protection they should be depriv’d of, if the Beasts should be fallen upon, and utterly destroy’d by the Hunters.

But there’s another Account given of these Things: For one of the Ancient Kings, called Menes, being set upon and pursu’d by his own Dogs, was forc’d into the Lake of Mœris, where a Crocodile (a Wonder to be told) took him up and carri’d him over to the other side, where in Gratitude to the Beast he built a City, and call’d it Crocodile; and commanded Crocodiles to be Ador’d as Gods, and Dedicated the Lake to them for a[232] place to Feed and Breed in. Where he built a Sepulcher for himself with a foursquare Pyramid, and a Labyrinth greatly admir’d by every Body. In the same manner they relate Stories of other Things, which would be too tedious here to recite. For some conceive it to be very clear and evident (by several of them not Eating many of the Fruits of the Earth) that Gain and Profit by sparing has infected them with this Superstition: for some never Taste Lentils, nor other Beans; and some never eat either Cheese or Onions or such like Food, although Egypt abounds with these Things. Thereby signifying that all should learn to be temperate; and whatsoever any feed upon, they should not give themselves to Gluttony. But others give another Reason; for they say that in the Time of the Ancient Kings, the People being Prone to Sedition, and Plotting to Rebel, one of their wise and prudent Princes divided Egypt into several Parts, and appointed the Worship of some Beast or other in every Part, or forbad some sort of Food, that by that means everyone Adoring their own Creature, and slighting that which was worshipped in another Province, the Egyptians might never agree among themselves.

But some give this Reason for Deifying of these Creatures: They say, that in the beginning, Men that were of a fierce and beastly Nature herded together and devoured one another; and being in perpetual War and Discord, the stronger always destroy’d the weaker. In process of time, those that were too weak for the other (taught at length by Experience) got in Bodies together, and had the Representation of those Beasts (which they afterwards worshipped) in their Standards, to which they ran together when they were in a Fright, upon every occasion, and so make up a considerable Force against them that attempted to assault them. This was imitated by the rest, and so the whole Multitude got into a Body; and hence it was that that Creature, which everyone suppos’d was the cause of his Safety, was honour’d as a God, as justly deserving that Adoration. And therefore at this day the People of Egypt differ in their Religion, everyone Worshipping that Beast which their Ancestors did in the beginning.d

A MODERN ACCOUNT OF THE WORSHIP OF APIS, THE SACRED BULL

Among the ceremonies connected with Osiris, the fête of Apis holds a conspicuous place.

For Osiris was also worshipped under the form of Apis, the Sacred Bull of Memphis, or as a human figure with a bull’s head, accompanied by the name “Apis-Osiris.” According to Plutarch, “Apis was a fair and beautiful image of the Soul of Osiris;” and the same author tells us that “Mnevis, the Sacred Ox of Heliopolis, was also dedicated to Osiris, and honoured by the Egyptians with a reverence next to that paid to Apis, whose sire some pretend him to be.” This agrees with the statement of Diodorus, who says, Apis and Mnevis were both sacred to Osiris, and worshipped as gods throughout the whole of Egypt; and Plutarch suggests that, from these well-known presentations of Osiris, the people of Elis and Argos derived the idea of Bacchus with an ox’s head; Bacchus being reputed to be the same as Osiris. Herodotus, in describing him, says, “Apis, also called Epaphus, is a young bull, whose mother can have no other offspring, and who is reported by the Egyptians to conceive from lightning sent from heaven, and thus to produce the god Apis. He is known by certain marks: his hair is black; on his forehead is a white triangular spot, on his back an eagle, and a beetle under his tongue and the hair of his tail is double.” Ovid represents[233] him of various colours. Strabo says his forehead and some parts of his body are of a white colour, the rest being black; “by which signs they fix upon a new one to succeed the other, when he dies;” and Plutarch thinks that, “on account of the great resemblance they imagine between Osiris and the Moon, his more bright and shining parts being shadowed and obscured by those that are of a darker hue, they call the Apis the living image of Osiris, and suppose him begotten by a ray of generative light, flowing from the moon, and fixing upon his mother, at a time when she was strongly disposed for it.”

Pliny speaks of Apis “having a white spot in the form of a crescent upon his right side, and a lump under his tongue in the form of a beetle.” Ammianus Marcellinus says the white crescent on his right side was the principal sign, and Ælianus mentions twenty-nine marks, by which he was recognised, each referable to some mystic signification. But he pretends that the Egyptians did not allow those given by Herodotus and Aristagoras. Some suppose him entirely black; and others contend that certain marks, as the predominating black colour, and the beetle on his tongue, show him to be consecrated to the sun, as the crescent to the moon. Ammianus and others say that “Apis was sacred to the Moon, Mnevis to the Sun”; and most authors describe the latter of a black colour.

It is difficult to decide if Herodotus is correct respecting the peculiar marks of Apis. There is, however, evidence from the bronzes, found in Egypt, that the vulture (not eagle) on his back was one of his characteristics, supplied, no doubt, like many others, by the priests themselves; who probably put him to much inconvenience, and pain too, to make the marks and hairs conform to his description.

To Apis belonged all the clean oxen, chosen for sacrifice; the necessary requisite for which, according to Herodotus, was, that they should be entirely free from black spots, or even a single black hair; though, as I shall have occasion to remark in treating of the sacrifices, this statement of the historian is far from accurate. It may also be doubted if the name Epaphus, by which he says Apis was called by the Greeks in their language, was of Greek origin.

He is called in the hieroglyphic legends Hapi; and the bull, the demonstrative and figurative sign following his name, is accompanied by the crux ansata, or emblem of life. It has seldom any ornament on its head; but the figure of Apis- (or Hapi-) Osiris generally wears the globe of the sun, and the Asp, the symbol of divine majesty; which are also given to the bronze figures of this bull.

Memphis was the place where Apis was kept, and where his worship was particularly observed. He was not merely looked upon as an emblem, but, as Pliny and Cicero say, was deemed “a god by the Egyptians”: and Strabo calls “Apis the same as Osiris.” Psamthek I there erected a grand court (ornamented with figures in lieu of columns twelve cubits in height, forming an inner peristyle), in which he was kept when exhibited in public. Attached to it were the two stables (delubra, or thalami), mentioned by Pliny: and Strabo says “Before the enclosure where Apis is kept, is a vestibule, in which also the mother of the sacred bull is fed; and into this vestibule Apis is introduced, in order to be shown to strangers. After being brought out for a little while, he is again taken back; at other times he is only seen through a window.” “The temple of Apis is close to that of Vulcan; which last is remarkable for its architectural beauty, its extent, and the richness of its decoration.”

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Festivals and Ceremonials of Apis Worship

The festival in honour of Apis lasted seven days; on which occasion a large concourse of people assembled at Memphis. The priests then led the sacred bull in solemn procession, all people coming forward from their houses to welcome him as he passed.

When the Apis died, certain priests, chosen for this duty, went in quest of another, who was known from the signs mentioned in the sacred books. As soon as he was found, they took him to the city of the Nile, preparatory to his removal to Memphis, where he was kept forty days; during which period women alone were permitted to see him. These forty days being completed, he was placed in a boat, with a golden cabin prepared to receive him, and he was conducted in state upon the Nile to Memphis.

Pliny and Ammianus, however, declare that they led the bull Apis to the fountain of the priests, and drowned him with much ceremony, as soon as the time prescribed in the sacred books was fulfilled. This Plutarch limits to twenty-five years (“the square of five, and the same number as the letters of the Egyptian alphabet”), beyond which it was forbidden that he should live; and having put him to death, they sought another to succeed him. His body was embalmed, and a grand funeral procession took place at Memphis, when his coffin, “placed on a sledge, was followed by the priests,” “dressed in the spotted skins of fawns (leopards), bearing the thyrsus in their hands, uttering the same cries, and making the same gesticulations as the votaries of Bacchus during the ceremonies in honour of that god.”

When the Apis died a natural death, his obsequies were celebrated on the most magnificent scale; and to such extravagance was this carried, that those who had the office of taking charge of him were often ruined by the heavy expenses entailed upon them. On one occasion, during the reign of the first Ptolemy, upwards of fifty talents were borrowed to defray the necessary cost of his funeral; “and in our time,” says Diodorus, “the curators of other sacred animals have expended a hundred talents in their burial.”

The Egyptians not only paid divine honours to the bull Apis, but, considering him the living image and representative of Osiris, they consulted him as an oracle, and drew from his actions good or bad omens. They were in the habit of offering him any kind of food with the hand: if he took it, the answer was considered favourable; if he refused, it was thought to be a sinister omen. Pliny and Ammianus observe that he refused what the unfortunate Germanicus presented to him; and the death of that prince, which happened shortly after, was thought to confirm most unequivocally the truth of those presages. The Egyptians also drew omens respecting the welfare of their country, according to the stable in which he happened to be. To these two stables he had free access; and when he spontaneously entered one, it foreboded benefits to Egypt, as the other the reverse; and many other tokens were derived from accidental circumstances connected with this sacred animal.

Pausanias says that those who wished to consult Apis first burnt incense on an altar, filling the lamps with oil which were lighted there, and depositing a piece of money on the altar to the right of the statue of the god. Then placing their mouth near his ear, in order to consult him, they asked whatever questions they wished. This done, they withdrew, covering their two ears until they were outside the sacred precincts of the temple; and there listening to the first expression any one uttered, they drew from it the desired omen.

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Children, also, according to Pliny and Solinus, who attended in great numbers during the processions in honour of the divine bull, received the gift of foretelling future events; and the same authors mention a superstitious belief at Memphis, of the influence of Apis upon the Crocodile, during the seven days when his birth was celebrated. On this occasion, a gold and silver patera was annually thrown into the Nile, at a spot called from its form the “Bottle”; and while this festival was held, no one was in danger of being attacked by crocodiles, though bathing carelessly in the river. But it could no longer be done with impunity after the sixth hour of the eighth day. The hostility of that animal to man was then observed invariably to return, as if permitted by the deity to resume its habits.

Apis was usually kept in one or other of the two stables—seldom going out, except into the court attached to them, where strangers came to visit him. But on certain occasions he was conducted through the town with great pomp. He was then escorted by numerous guards, who made a way amidst the crowd, and prevented the approach of the profane; and a chorus of children singing hymns in his honour headed the procession.

The greatest attention was paid to the health of Apis; they took care to obtain for him the most wholesome food; and they rejoiced if they could preserve his life to the full extent prescribed by law. Plutarch also notices his being forbidden to drink the water of the Nile, in consequence of its having a peculiarly fattening property. “For,” he adds, “they endeavour to prevent fatness, as well in Apis, as in themselves: always studious that their bodies may sit as light about their souls as possible, in order that their mortal part may not oppress and weigh down the more divine and immortal.”

Many fêtes were held at different seasons of the year; for, as Herodotus observes, far from being contented with one festival, the Egyptians celebrate annually a very great number: of which that of Diana (Pakht), kept at the city of Bubastis, holds the first rank, and is performed with the greatest pomp. Next to it is that of Isis, at Busiris, a city situated in the middle of the Delta, with a very large temple, consecrated to that Goddess, the Ceres of the Greeks. The third in importance is the fête of Minerva (Nit), held at Saïs; the fourth, of the Sun, at Heliopolis; the fifth, of Latona, in the city of Buto; and the sixth is that performed at Papreims, in honour of Mars.e

Strabo, the famous geographer of antiquity, visited Egypt in 24 B.C., and ascended the Nile. Among other records of his trip, he has left us a picturesque account of his peep at the sacred bull.

At Heliopolis, he says, we saw large buildings in which the priests lived. For it is said that anciently this was the principal residence of the priests, who studied philosophy and astronomy. But there are no longer either such a body of persons or such pursuits. No one was pointed out to us on the spot, as presiding over these studies, but only persons who perform sacred rites, and who explained to strangers (the peculiarities of) the temples.

In sailing up the river we meet with Babylon, a strong fortress, built by some Babylonians who had taken refuge there, and had obtained permission from the kings to establish a settlement in that place. At present it is an encampment for one of the three legions which garrison Egypt. There is a mountainous ridge, which extends from the encampment[236] as far as the Nile. At this ridge are wheels and screws, by which water is raised from the river, and one hundred and fifty prisoners are (thus) employed.

The pyramids on the other side (of the river) at Memphis may be clearly discerned from this place, for they are not far off.

Memphis itself also, the residence of the kings of Egypt, is near, being only three schœni distant from the Delta. It contains temples, among which is that of Apis, who is the same as Osiris. Here the ox Apis is kept in a sort of sanctuary, and is held, as I have said, to be a god. The forehead and some other small parts of the body are white; the other parts are black. By these marks the fitness of the successor is always determined, when the animal to which they pay these honours dies. In front of the sanctuary is a court, in which there is another sanctuary for the dam of Apis. Into this court the Apis is let loose at times, particularly for the purpose of exhibiting him to strangers. He is seen through a door in the sanctuary, and he is permitted to be seen also out of it. After he has frisked about a little in the court, he is taken back to his own stall. The temple of Apis is near the Hephæsteum (or temple of Vulcan); the Hephæsteum itself is very sumptuously constructed, both as regards the size of the naos and in other respects. In front of the Dromos is a colossal figure consisting of a single stone. It is usual to celebrate bull-fights in this Dromos; the bulls are bred expressly for this purpose, like horses. They are let loose, and fight with one another, the conqueror receiving a prize.f

THE METHODS OF EMBALMING THE DEAD

Even more striking than the worship of Apis was the custom of embalming the dead, which was in vogue uninterruptedly for some thousands of years. Herodotus tells us of the exact method of procedure:

There are certain persons appointed by law to the exercise of the profession of embalming. When a dead body is brought to them, they exhibit to the friends of the deceased, different models highly finished in wood. The most perfect of these they say resembles one whom I do not think it religious to name in such a matter; the second is of less price, and inferior in point of execution; another is still more mean; they then inquire after which model the deceased shall be represented: when the price is determined, the relations retire, and the embalmers thus proceed: In the most perfect specimens of their art, they draw the brain through the nostrils, partly with a piece of crooked iron, and partly by the infusion of drugs; they then with an Ethiopian stone make an incision in the side, through which they extract the intestines; these they cleanse thoroughly, washing them with palm-wine, and afterwards covering them with pounded aromatics: they then fill the body with powder of pure myrrh, cassia, and all other perfumes, except frankincense. Having sown up the body, it is covered with nitre for the space of seventy days, which time they may not exceed; at the end of this period it is washed, closely wrapped in bandages of cotton, dipped in a gum which the Egyptians use as glue: it is then returned to the relations, who enclose the body in a case of wood, made to resemble a human figure, and place it against the wall in the repository of their dead. The above is the most costly mode of embalming. They who wish to be less expensive, adopt the following method: they neither draw out the intestines, nor make any incision in the dead body, but inject an unguent made from the cedar; after taking proper means to secure the[237] injected oil within the body, it is covered with nitre for the time above specified: on the last day they withdraw the liquor before introduced, which brings with it all the bowels and intestines; the nitre eats away the flesh, and the skin and bones only remain: the body is returned in this state, and no further care taken concerning it. There is a third mode of embalming appropriated to the poor. A particular kind of ablution is made to pass through the body, which is afterwards left in nitre for the above seventy days, and then returned. The wives of men of rank, and such females as have been distinguished by their beauty or importance, are not immediately on their decease delivered to the embalmers: they are usually kept for three or four days, which is done to prevent any indignity being offered to their persons. An instance of this once occurred.b

Diodorus gives a slightly different account of the methods of the embalmer, adding certain most instructive details as to burial customs:

“Now tho’ we have said perhaps more than is needful of their sacred Creatures, yet with this we have set forth the Laws of the Egyptians, which are very remarkable. But when a Man comes to understand their Rites and Ceremonies in Burying their Dead, he’ll be struck with much greater Admiration.

“For after the Death of any of them, all the Friends and Kindred of the deceased throw Dirt upon their Heads, and run about through the City; mourning and lamenting till such time as the Body be interr’d, and abstain from Baths, Wine and all pleasants Meats in the mean time; and forbear to cloath themselves with any rich Attire. They have three sorts of Funerals: The Stately and Magnificent, the Moderate, and the Meanest. In the first they spend a Talent of Silver, in the second twenty Minas [about £62 10s. or $300], in the last they are at very small Charges. They that have the Charge of wrapping up and burying the Body, are such as have been taught the Art by their Ancestors. These give in a Writing to the Family of every thing that is to be laid out in the Funeral, and inquire of them after what Manner they would have the Body interr’d. When every thing is agreed upon, they take up the Body and deliver it to them whose Office it is to take Care of it. Then the Chief among them (who is call’d the Scribe) having the Body laid upon the Ground, marks out how much of the left Side towards the Bowels is to be incis’d and open’d, upon which the Paraschistes (so by them call’d) with an Ethiopian Stone dissects so much of the Flesh as by the Law is justifiable, and having done it, he forthwith runs away might and main, and all there present pursue him with Execrations, and pelt him with Stones, as if he were guilty of some horrid Offence, for they look upon him as an hateful Person, who wounds and offers Violence to the Body in that kind, or does it any Predjudice whatsoever.

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“But as for those whom they call the Taricheutæ [the Embalmers], they highly honour them, for they are the Priests Companions, and as Sacred Persons are admitted into the Temple. As soon as they come to the dissected Body, one of the Taricheutæ thrusts up his Hand through the Wound, into the Breast of the Dead, and draws out all the Intestins, but the Reins and the Heart. Another cleanses all the Bowels, and washes them in Phœnician Wine mixt with diverse Aromatick Spices. Having at last wash’d the Body, they first anoint it all over with the Oyl of Cedar and other precious Ointments for the space of forty days together; that done, they rub it well with Myrrhe, Cinnamon, and such like things, not only apt and effectual for long Preservation, but for sweet scenting of the Body also, and so deliver it to the Kindred of the Dead, with every Member so whole and intire, that no Part of the Body seems to be alter’d till it come to the very Hairs of the Eyelids and the Eye-brows, insomuch as the Beauty and Shape of the Face seems just as it was before. By which Means many of the Egyptians laying up the Bodies of their Ancestors in stately Monuments, perfectly see the true Visage and Countenance of those that were buried, many Ages before they themselves were born. So that in viewing the Proportion of every one of their Bodies and the Lineaments of their Faces, they take exceeding great Delight, even as much as if they were still living among them.

“Moreover, the Friends and nearest Relations of the Dead acquaint the Judges and the rest of their Friends with the Time prefixt for the Funeral of such an one by Name, declaring that such a day he is to pass the Lake. At which Time forty Judges appear and sit together in a Semicircle, in a Place beyond the Lake; where a Ship (before provided by such as have the Care of the Business) is hal’d up to the Shoar, govern’d by a Pilot, whom the Egyptians call Charon. And therefore they say, that Orpheus seeing this Ceremony when he was in Egypt, invented the Fable of Hell, partly imitating them in Egypt, and partly adding something of his own; of which we shall speak particularly hereafter.

“The Ship being now in the Lake, every one is at Liberty by the Law to accuse the Dead before the Coffin be put aboard; and if any Accuser appears and makes good his Accusation, that he liv’d an ill Life, then the Judges give Sentence, and the Body is debarr’d from being buried after the usual Manner; but if the Informer be convicted of a scandalous and malicious Accusation, he’s very severely punish’d. If no Informer appear, or that the Information prove false, all the Kindred of the Deceased leave off Mourning, and begin to set forth his Praises; but say nothing of his Birth (as is the Custom among the Greeks) because they account all in Egypt to be equally noble. But they recount how the deceased was educated from a Child, his Breeding till he came to Man’s Estate, his Piety towards the Gods and his Justice towards Men, his Chastity and other Virtues, wherein[239] he excell’d; and they pray and call upon the infernal Deities to receive the deceas’d into the Society of the Just. The common People take it from the other, and approve of all that is said in his Praise with a loud Shout, and set forth likewise his Vertues with the highest Praises and Strains of Commendation, as he that is to live for ever with the just in the Kingdom of Jove.

“Then they (that have Tombs of their own) interr the Corps in Places appointed for that Purpose; they that have none of their own, build a small Apartment in their own Houses, and rear up the Coffin to the Sides of the strongest Wall of the Building. Such as are deny’d common Burial, either because they are in Debt, or convicted of some horrid Crime, they bury in their own Houses; and in After-times it often happens that some of their Kindred growing rich, pay off the Debts of the deceas’d, or get him absolv’d, and then bury their Ancestor with State and Splendour. For amongst the Egyptians it’s a Sacred Constitution, that they should at their greatest Costs honour their Parents and Ancestors who are translated to an Eternal Habitation.

“It’s a Custom likewise among them to give the Bodies of their Parents in Pawn to their Creditors, and they that do not presently redeem them, fall under the greatest Disgrace imaginable, and are deny’d Burial after their Deaths. One may justly wonder at the Authors of this excellent Constitution, who both by what we see practis’d among the living, and by the decent Burial of the dead, did (as much as possibly lay within the Power of Men) endeavour to promote Honesty and faithful Dealing one with another. For the Greeks (as to what concern’d the Rewards of the Just and the Punishment of the Impious) had nothing amongst them but invented Fables and Poetical Fictions, which never wrought upon Men for the Amendment of their Lives, but on the contrary, were despis’d and laught at by the lewder Sort.

“But among the Egyptians, the Punishment of the bad and the Rewards of the good being not told as idle Tales, but every day seen with their own Eyes, all Sorts were warn’d of their Duties, and by this Means was wrought and continu’d a most exact Reformation of Manners and orderly Conversation among them. For those certainly are the best Laws that advance Virtue and Honesty, and instruct Men in a prudent Converse in the World, rather than those that tend only to the heaping up of Wealth, and teach Men to be rich.”d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XI. EGYPTIAN CULTURE

By far the greater number of the remains of Egyptian civilisation that have come down to us, are monuments that may be classed as works of art. Indeed, when one speaks of ancient Egypt, one thinks instinctively of her art remains; her pyramids, temples, and sphinxes, her obelisks and colossal sculptures. As one wanders through the halls of such great collections as those of the British Museum, or of the Louvre, it seems to him as if art must have been the very life of Egypt, and as if a considerable proportion of her people must have been engaged in producing the multitude of monuments that are here preserved. But there is, of course, a certain illusion in this thought.

The number of art monuments preserved in Egypt is, indeed, very large in the aggregate, but it must be remembered that they represent the accumulated treasures of many centuries. Thanks to the climate of Egypt, a vastly larger proportion of her monuments have been preserved than have come down to us from any other people of antiquity, and this fact should be borne constantly in mind when one endeavours to estimate the real status of art in that country. Now that the results of many centuries of labour are gathered into a comparatively few collections, the impression made upon the observer is naturally somewhat different from what it would have been could he have seen the same monuments in their original locations scattered throughout the kingdom.

Nevertheless, after making all deductions for the perverted historical perspective thus induced, the fact remains that we are quite justified in speaking of the Egyptians as a singularly artistic race. Indeed, it would be absurd to deny this position to the people who, first of any on the earth so far as known, created a truly great and truly individual art.

It has been held a matter for surprise that the Greeks, who so fully appreciated, and, indeed, so greatly overestimated, the learning and the occult wisdom of the Egyptians, should have failed to be impressed by their works of art. But, rightly considered, there is nothing at all remarkable in this. It must be remembered that Herodotus, who gives us our earliest glimpses of Egypt through Grecian eyes, lived in the age of Pericles, when the masterpieces of Phidias and his contemporaries were constantly before the eyes of the Greek traveller as the criterion by which other works of art were to be judged. It can hardly be wondered at that, judged by this test, the Egyptian sculptures did not seem remarkable. Herodotus had not the spirit of the antiquarian nor of the modern scientific historian, and he therefore made no allowance for the fact that the major part of the sculptures[241] visible had been made almost a thousand years before the age of Phidias; but it is that fact which the modern investigator should bear constantly in mind.

It would be absurd to claim for the Egyptian statues that they compare for a moment as finished works of art with the Grecian productions of the Golden Age. But when one reflects that it was the Egyptians who led the way and first pointed out the possibility of modelling in stone; when one reflects that, so far as extant remains can give us any clew, there were no forerunners of the Egyptians who even remotely approached their standard; when, in a word, one remembers that this art was an indigenous product, as nearly independent of outside influences as any human creations ever can be—then, and then only, is one prepared to appreciate the real merit of the Egyptian sculptor.

To one who approaches this work merely in the cold spirit of the modern critic, untouched by the enthusiasm of the antiquarian, the sculpture of the Egyptians may well be characterised as crude in the extreme. In the first instance it is cold, rigid, immobile, lacking utterly the plasticity and action of the Greek product. Secondly, it is but crudely modelled. No Egyptian artist ever learned to draw in the modern acceptance of that word, or to model in more than the most elementary fashion. These, indeed, taken by themselves, are radical defects, and at first sight they render the Egyptian monuments grotesque, rather than pleasing, to the trained artistic eye. But when one has lived long enough among these statues to enter more fully into their spirit, when one has learned to put away the classical traditions and to relax somewhat his standards of technique, he will see this work in quite another light. He will recognise it as the titanic effort of a constructive genius in that earlier and more truly creative period when technique has not been mastered, but when a true artistic impulse is impelling the aspirant towards new and beautiful ideals which he himself will never quite attain, but to which his work points the way. It is large work in the fullest sense of the word, this art of the Egyptians, and he who can get no farther than to note its often faulty drawing, its imperfect modelling, is forever shut out from a true appreciation of its merits. But, on the other hand, the dreamer who sees, as some antiquarians are wont to do, matchless perfections in its very crudities, and intentional artistic effects in the mere faults of its technique—this enthusiast misses the true lessons of Egyptian art as widely as the overcritical and unsympathetic carper.

However much the various schools of critics may differ in their estimates, the task of the historian at least is clear. He must think of Egyptian art in its relations of time and place. To him it is important because of its position in the scale of the evolution of art in the world. And in this view, putting aside at once hypercriticism and overfervid enthusiasm, Egyptian art can hardly fail to impress the observer as one of the most marvellous of human creations.a

While Greece was still in its infancy, Egypt had long been the leading nation of the world; she was noted for her magnificence, her wealth, and power, and all acknowledged her pre-eminence in wisdom and civilisation. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Greeks should have admitted into their early art some of the forms then most in vogue; and though the wonderful taste of that gifted people speedily raised them to a point of excellence never attained by the Egyptians or any others, the rise and first germs of art and architecture must be sought in the valley of the[242] Nile. In the oldest monuments of Greece, the sloping or pyramidal line constantly predominates; the columns in the oldest Greek order are almost purely Egyptian, in the proportions of the shaft, and in the form of its shallow flutes without fillets; and it is a remarkable fact that the oldest Egyptian columns are those which bear the closest resemblance to the Greek Doric.

Though great variety was permitted in objects of luxury, as furniture, vases, and other things depending on caprice, the Egyptians were forbidden to introduce any material innovations into the human figure, such as would alter its general character; and all subjects connected with religion retained to the last the same conventional type. A god in the latest temple was of the same form as when represented on monuments of the earliest date; and King Menes would have recognised Amen, or Osiris, in a Ptolemaic or a Roman sanctuary. In sacred subjects the law was inflexible; and religion, which has frequently done so much for the development and direction of taste in sculpture, had the effect of fettering the genius of Egyptian artists. No improvements, resulting from experience and observation, were admitted in the mode of drawing the human figure; to copy nature was not allowed; it was therefore useless to study it, and no attempt was made to give the proper action to the limbs. Certain rules, certain models, had been established by the priesthood; and the faulty conceptions of ignorant times were copied and perpetuated by every successive artist. For, as Plato and Synesius say, the Egyptian sculptors were not suffered to attempt anything contrary to the regulations laid down regarding the figures of the gods; they were forbidden to introduce any change, or to invent new subjects and habits; and thus the art, and the rules which bound it, always remained the same.

Egyptian bas-relief appears to have been, in its origin, a mere copy of painting, its predecessor. The first attempt to represent the figures of gods, sacred emblems, and other subjects consisted in drawing, or painting, simple outlines of them on a flat surface, the details being afterwards put in with colour; but in process of time these forms were traced on stone with a tool, and the intermediate space between the various figures being afterwards cut away, the once level surface assumed the appearance of a bas-relief. It was, in fact, a pictorial representation on stone, which is evidently the character of all the bas-reliefs on Egyptian monuments; and which readily accounts for the imperfect arrangement of their figures.

Deficient in conception, and above all in a proper knowledge of grouping, they were unable to form those combinations which give true expression;[243] every picture was made up of isolated parts, put together according to some general notions, but without harmony, or preconceived effect. The human face, the whole body, and everything they introduced, were composed in the same manner of separate members placed together one by one according to their relative situations: the eye, the nose, and other features composed a face, but the expression of feelings and passions was entirely wanting; and the countenance of the king, whether charging an enemy’s phalanx in the heat of battle, or peaceably offering incense in a sombre temple, presented the same outline and the same inanimate look. The peculiarity of the front view of an eye, introduced in a profile, is thus accounted for: it was the ordinary representation of that feature added to a profile, and no allowance was made for any change in the position of the head.

It was the same with drapery: the figure was first drawn, and the drapery then added, not as part of the whole, but as an accessory; they had no general conception, no previous idea of the effect required to distinguish the warrior or the priest, beyond the impressions received from costume, or from the subject of which they formed a part; and the same figure was dressed according to the character it was intended to perform. Every portion of a picture was conceived by itself, and inserted as it was wanted to complete the scene; and when the walls of the building, where a subject was to be drawn, had been accurately ruled with squares, the figures were introduced, and fitted to this mechanical arrangement. The members were appended to the body, and these squares regulated their form and distribution, in whatever posture they might be placed.

The proportions of the human figure did not continue always the same. During the IVth and other early dynasties it differed from that of the Augustan age of the XVIIIth and XIXth; and another change took place under the Ptolemies. The chief alteration was in the height of the knee from the ground, which was higher during the XVIIIth and XIXth than in the ancient and later periods. The whole height of the figure in bas-reliefs and paintings was then divided into nineteen parts; and the wall having been ruled in squares, according to its intended size, all the parts of it were put in according to their established positions; the knee, for instance, falling on the sixth line. But the length of the foot was not, as in Greece, the standard from which they reckoned; for being equal to 3 spaces, it could not be taken as the base of 19; though the height of the foot being 1 might answer for the unit.

In the paintings of the tombs greater license was allowed in the representation of subjects relating to private life, the trades, or the manners and occupations of the people; and some indication of perspective in the position of the figures may occasionally be observed: but the attempt was imperfect, and, probably, to an Egyptian eye, unpleasing; for such is the force of habit, that even where nature is copied, a conventional style is sometimes preferred to a more accurate representation.

In the representation of animals, they appear not to have been restricted to the same rigid style; but genius once cramped can scarcely be expected[244] to make any great effort to rise, or to succeed in the attempt; and the same union of parts into a whole, the same preference for profile, and the same stiff action, are observable in these as in the human figure. Seldom did they attempt to draw the face in front, either of men or animals; and when this was done, it fell far short of the profile, and was composed of the same juxtaposition of parts. It must, however, be allowed, that in general the character and form of animals were admirably portrayed; the parts were put together with greater truth; and the same conventionality was not maintained, as in the shoulders and other portions of the human body.

The mode of representing men and animals in profile is primitive, and characteristic of the commencement of art: the first attempts made by an uncivilised people are confined to it; and until the genius of artists bursts forth, this style continues to hold its ground. From its simplicity it is readily understood; the most inexperienced perceive the object intended to be represented, and no effort is required to comprehend it. Hence it is that, though few combinations can be made under such restrictions, those few are perfectly intelligible.

As the wish to record events gave the first, religion gave the second, impulse to sculpture. The simple pillar of wood or stone, which was originally chosen to represent the deity, afterwards assumed the human form, the noblest image of the power that created it; though the Hermæ of Greece were not, as some have thought, the origin of statues, but were borrowed from the mummy-shaped gods of Egypt.

Pausanias thinks that “all statues were in ancient times of wood, particularly those made in Egypt”; but this must have been at a period so remote as to be far beyond the known history of that country; though it is probable that when the arts were in their infancy, the Egyptians were confined to statues of that kind; and they occasionally erected wooden figures in their temples, even till the times of the latter Pharaohs.

Long after men had attempted to make out the parts of the figure, statues continued to be very rude; the arms were placed directly down the sides to the thighs, and the legs were united together; nor did they pass beyond this imperfect state in Greece until the age of Dædalus. Fortunately for themselves and for the world, the Greeks were allowed to free themselves from old habits; while the Egyptians, at the latest periods, continued to follow the imperfect models of their early artists, and were forever prevented from arriving at excellence in sculpture: and though they made great progress in other branches of art, though they evinced considerable taste in the forms of their vases, their furniture, and even in some architectural[245] details, they were forever deficient in ideal beauty, and in the mode of representing the natural positions of the human figure.

In Egypt, the prescribed automaton character of the figures effectually prevented all advancement in the statuary’s art, the limbs being straight, without any attempt at action, or, indeed, any indication of life: they were really statues of the person they represented, not the person “living in marble”; in which they differed entirely from those of Greece. No statue of a warrior was sculptured in the varied attitudes of attack and defence; no wrestler, no discobolus, no pugilist exhibited the grace, the vigour, or the muscular action of a man; nor were the beauties, the feeling, and the elegance of female forms displayed in stone: all was made to conform to the same invariable model, which confined the human figure to a few conventional postures.

A sitting statue, whether of a man or woman, was represented with the hands placed upon the knees, or held across the breast; a kneeling figure sometimes supported a small shrine or sacred emblem; and when standing, the arms were placed directly down the sides of the thighs, one foot (and that always the left) being advanced beyond the other, as if in the attitude of walking, but without any attempt to separate the legs.

The oldest Egyptian sculptures on all large monuments were in low relief, and, as usual at every period, painted (obelisks and everything carved in hard stone, some funereal tablets, and other small objects, being in intaglio); and this style continued in vogue until the time of Ramses II, who introduced intaglio very generally on large monuments; and even his battle scenes at Karnak and the Memnonium are executed in this manner. The reliefs were little raised above the level of the wall; they had generally a flat surface with the edges softly rounded off, far surpassing the intaglio in effect; and it is to be regretted that the best epoch of art, when design and execution were in their zenith, should have abandoned a style so superior; which, too, would have improved in proportion to the advancement of that period.

Intaglio continued to be generally employed, until the accession of the XXVIth Dynasty, when the low relief was again introduced; and in the monuments of Psamthek and Aahmes are numerous instances of the revival of the ancient style. This was afterwards universally adopted, and a return to intaglio on large monuments was only occasionally attempted, in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.

After the accession of the XXVIth Dynasty some attempt was made to revive the arts, which had been long neglected; and independent of the patronage of government, the wealth of private individuals was liberally employed in their encouragement. Public buildings were erected in many parts of Egypt, and beautified with rich sculpture; the city of Saïs, the royal residence of the Pharaohs of that dynasty, was adorned with the utmost magnificence; and extensive additions were made to the temples of Memphis, and even to those of the distant Thebes.

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The fresh impulse thus given to art was not without effect; the sculptures of that period exhibit an elegance and beauty which might even induce some to consider them equal to the productions of an earlier age; and in the tombs of Assassif, at Thebes, are many admirable specimens of Egyptian art. To those, however, who understand the true feeling of this peculiar school, it is evident that though in minuteness and finish they are deserving of the highest commendation, yet in grandeur of conception and in boldness of execution, they fall far short of the sculptures of Seti and the second Ramses.

The skill of the Egyptian artists in drawing bold and clear outlines is, perhaps, more worthy of admiration than anything connected with this branch of art; and in no place is the freedom of their drawing more conspicuous than in the figures in the unfinished part of Belzoni’s tomb at Thebes. It was in the drawing alone that they excelled, being totally ignorant of the correct mode of colouring a figure; and their painting was not an imitation of nature, but merely the harmonious combination of certain hues, which they well understood. Indeed, to this day, the harmony of positive colours is thoroughly felt in Egypt and the East; and it is strange to find the little perception of it in northern Europe, where theories take upon themselves to explain to the mind what the eye has not yet learned, as if a grammar could be written before the language is understood.

Egyptian architecture evidently derived much from the imitation of different natural productions, as palm trees and various plants of the country; but Egyptian columns were not borrowed from the wooden supports of the earliest buildings. Columns were not introduced into the interior of their houses until architecture had made very great progress; the small original temple and the primitive dwelling consisted merely of four walls; and neither the column nor its architrave were borrowed from wooden constructions nor from the house. And though the architrave was derived in Egypt, as elsewhere, from constructed buildings, that member originated in the stone beam, reaching from pillar to pillar in the temples. And if the square stone pillar was used in the quarry, the stone architrave was unknown to the Egyptians until they found reason to increase the size of, and add a portico to, their temples. And that the portico was neither a necessary nor an original part of their[247] temples is plainly shown by the smaller sanctuaries being built, even at the latest times, without it. Some members of Egyptian architecture, it is true, were derived from the woodwork of the primitive house or temple, as the overhanging cornice and the torus that runs up the ends of the walls, which it separates from the cornice, the former being the projecting roof of palm branches, and the other the framework of reeds bound together, which secured the mud (or bricks) composing the walls.

As painted decoration preceded sculpture, the ornaments (in later times carved in stone) were at first represented in colour, and the mouldings of Egyptian monuments were then merely painted on the flat surfaces of the walls and pillars. The next step was to chisel them in relief. The lotus blossom, the papyrus head, water-plants, the palm tree, and the head of a goddess, were among the usual ornaments of a cornice, or a pillar; and these favourite devices of ancient days continued in after times to be repeated in relief, when an improved style of art had substituted sculpture for the mere painted representation. But when the square pillar had been gradually converted into a polygonal shape, the ornamental devices not having room enough upon its narrow facettes, led to the want and invention of another form of column; and from that time a round shaft was surmounted by the palm-tree capital, or by the blossom or the bud of the papyrus, which had hitherto only been painted, or represented in relief, upon the flat surfaces of a square pillar. Hence the origin of new orders differing so widely from the polygonal column.

For the capitals the Egyptians frequently selected objects which were favourites with them, as the lotus and other flowers, and these, as well as various animals or their heads, were adopted, to form a cornice, particularly in their houses and tombs, or to ornament fancy articles of furniture and of dress.

In this they committed an error, which the Greeks, with a finer perception of taste and adaptability, rightly avoided. These refined people knew that in architecture conventional devices had a much more pleasing effect than objects merely copied from nature; for, besides the incongruity of an actual representation of flowers to compose mouldings and other decorative parts of architecture, the imperfect imitation in an unsuitable material has a bad effect.

The ceilings of Egyptian temples were painted blue and studded with stars, to represent the firmament (as in early European churches); and on the part over the central passage, through which the king and the religious processions passed, were vultures and other emblems; the winged globe[248] always having its place over the doorways. The whole building, as well as its sphinxes and other accessories, were richly painted; and though a person unaccustomed to see the walls of a large building so decorated, might suppose the effect to be far from pleasing, no one who understands the harmony of colours will fail to admit that they perfectly understood their distribution and proper combinations, and that an Egyptian temple was greatly improved by the addition of painted sculptures.

Gilding was employed in the decoration of some of the ornamental details of the building; and was laid on a purple ground, to give it greater richness; an instance of which may be seen in the larger temple at Kalabshi, in Nubia. It was sparingly employed, and not allowed to interfere, by an undue quantity, with the effect of the other colours; which they knew well how to introduce in their proper proportions; and such discords as light green and strawberry-and-cream were carefully avoided.

The Egyptians showed considerable taste in the judicious arrangement of colours for decorative purposes; they occasionally succeeded in form, as in the shapes of many of their vases, their furniture, and their ornaments; and they had still greater knowledge of proportion, so necessary for their gigantic monuments; but though they knew well how to give to their buildings the effect of grandeur, vastness, and durability, they had little idea of the beautiful; and were far behind the Greeks in the appreciation of form. It is, however, rare to find any people who combine colour, form, and proportion; and even the Greeks occasionally failed to attain perfection in their beautiful vases, some of which are faulty in the handles and the foot.

Among the peculiarities of Egyptian architecture, one of the most important is the studied avoidance of uniformity in the arrangement of the columns, and many of the details. Of these some are evident to the eye, others are only intended to have an influence on the general effect, and are not perceptible without careful examination. Thus the capitals of the columns in the great hall at Karnak are at different heights, some extending lower down the shaft than others; evidently with a view to correct the sameness of symmetrical repetition, and to avoid fatiguing the sight with too much regularity. This is not to be perceived until the eye is brought on a level with the lower part of the capitals; and its object was only effect, like that of many curved lines introduced in a Greek temple, as at the Parthenon.

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But the Egyptians often carried their dislike of uniformity to an extreme, beyond even what is justified by the study of variety. Where they avoided that extreme their motive was legitimate; and it is remarkable that they were the first people whose monuments offer instances of that diversity so characteristic of Saracenic and Gothic architecture.

The arch was employed in Egypt at a very early period; and crude brick arches were in common use in roofing tombs at least as early as Amenhotep I, in the sixteenth century before our era. And since one was discovered at Thebes bearing his name, others have been found of the age of Tehutimes III (his fourth successor) and of Ramses V. It even seems to have been known in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, judging from what appear to be vaulted granaries at Beni-Hasan.b

Egyptian architecture was long a marvel to the later world, since it was so thoroughly overscrolled with strange designs of animals, and gods, and symbols that provoked a helpless curiosity. These figures, graceful as they were, were not of merely decorative import. They were less art than literature; less literature than chronicle: in a word, they were the characters of a strange system of writing.

THE HIEROGLYPHICS

It is extremely difficult to give in brief space, or, indeed, to give at all, a clear idea of the exact character of this Egyptian writing, which for so many centuries fascinated, while puzzling, the observers, utterly baffling all their efforts to decipher it. The Egyptians were the aristocrats of antiquity. It is true that the Greeks described all non-Hellenic nations as barbarians, but it should not be inferred from this that the Greeks applied to this term the exact significance it has come to have in more recent times. What the Greek really seems to have implied was that the speech of all other nations was barbarous or unintelligible; but he by no means regarded all other nations as less civilised than himself. To be sure, he did hold this attitude towards Romans, Persians, Scythians and various other contemporary nations, but he made an exception in the case of the Babylonians, and particularly in the case of the Egyptians. The latter people, indeed, he regarded with something akin to reverence, as a people who could claim an antiquity of civilisation to which Greece could not at all pretend.

The wise men of Greece, as we have seen, travelled in Egypt and sat at the feet of the Egyptian priests. There is nothing to show that they were not received courteously, but there are many evidences that they were given no more than a half-hearted welcome, and that what they gained of Egyptian lore was but a surface knowledge; for the Egyptians, like the Greeks, regarded all other nations as barbarians, and it would seem that they applied this term with the full weight of its modern meaning. To them the Greeks, no less than their other neighbours, were uninteresting parvenus, unworthy of the serious regard of an aristocratic people. It is believed that in the early days all commerce of outside nations with Egypt was as fully interdicted as could be done by Egyptian laws. At a later period the outsiders made forcible intrusion, and, in time, apparently the Egyptians became partially reconciled to this new order of things. But it was long before any scholars from the outer world were permitted to penetrate the Egyptian mysteries. In particular, we have no evidence that any Greek or Roman of the early day ever had the slightest comprehension of the true character of Egyptian writing.

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Listen for example to the strange theories of Claudius Ælianus, the Roman historian of the third century, who solemnly explained the hieroglyphics as follows—to quote the quaint diction of a sixteenth century translation:a

“BY WHAT CHARACTERS, PICTURES, AND IMAGES, THE LEARNED EGIPTIANS EXPRESSED THE MYSTERIES OF THEIR MINDES

“When they would signifie wrathe and fury, they set downe the image of a Lyon. When they would signifie talke, they set downe the figure of a toung. When they would signifie fleshly pleasure, they set down the number of XVI. When they would signifie lerning, they set down the picture of Dew dropping from the clowdes. By a Kat they meane destruction. By a Flye, they meane shamelesnes. By the Ant running into the Corne, they meane provision. By a man walking in water without a hed, they meane a thing unpossible. By a swarme of Bees following the maister Bee, they signifie obedient subjects. By a man hiding his privy members with his hands, they meane Temperance. By the floures of Poppy, they signifie sicknes. By an armed man shooting in a Bowe of steele, they meane Rebellion. By an Eagle flying against the Sun, they meane windy weather. By an Owle standing uppon a tree, they signifie death. By a Lace tyed in many knots, they meane mutual Love. By Bookes and Scrowles, they meane Auncientnes. By a Ladder set against a Castle wall, they meane a seedge about a Town or a Fortresse. By a Mule, they signifie a Woman with a barrain wombe. By a Mole, they meane blindnesse. By a Lapwing sitting uppon a Cluster of Grapes, they meane a plentiful Vintage. By a Sceptre and an eye on the top thereof looking downwarde, they meane power and polisie. By a Spindle ful of thred broken of from the Distaf, they mean the shortnes of mans life.”e

This is very absurd, yet nothing more rational was known of the subject in classical times. The very name which the Greeks supplied to the strange Egyptian script shows their ignorance of it. They called it hieroglyphics, from ἱερός, sacred, γλύφειν, to carve, implying their belief that this writing was purely of a sacred character, which, it is now well known, is by no means the case. It would seem as if in the later day, when, after the death of Alexander, Egypt came under the rule of the Macedonian Ptolemies, there must have been Greeks who acquired a knowledge of the Egyptian writing, just as there were undoubtedly Egyptians who learned Greek. Yet the number of these was probably more limited than one might suppose, for the Greeks were the Frenchmen of antiquity; imbued with a reverential love of their own language, they were little given to acquiring any other. Even so, it would seem that there must have been, here and there, an inquiring mind, which would take up the study of the hieroglyphics and ferret out their secrets under the guidance of Egyptian tutors; but if such there were, few records of their accomplishments have come down to us, and none at all that can serve to give the slightest clew to the true character of the strange inscriptions.

About the beginning of our era, Egypt having become a Roman province, all its personal life was stamped out. The hieroglyphic language was no longer written or read. Long before that, the language of the people had been greatly modified from its ancient purity, and in the day of Egypt’s greatness it was only the scholarly few, chiefly the priests, who could read and write the language. Now the speech became still further modified, until[251] finally, through the slow mutations of time, modern Coptic has developed as its lineal descendant. In the early days, however,—probably before the time of the oldest extant records,—the original picture writing, or hieroglyphics proper, had been modified into a sort of running script, which the Greeks called hieratic; and this again had undergone another modification some four or five centuries before our era, in the development of a script, called enchorial or demotic, which in the day of the Ptolemies represented the language of the Egyptian people. But after the complete disruption of Egypt under the Romans, the hieratic and demotic forms of the writing, as well as the hieroglyphics proper, ceased to be employed; and presently, as has been said, all three forms became quite unintelligible to any person living. From that time on, until the early days of the nineteenth century, the records of Egypt, preserved so numerously on their monuments, on the papyrus rolls and mummy-cases, were a closed book. No man lived, during this period, in Egypt or out of Egypt, who did more than effect the crudest guess at the meaning of this strange writing.

For something like two thousand years the Egyptian language was a dead language in the fullest sense of the term, and the records, locked imperishably in the hieroglyphics, seemed likely to hold their mysterious secret from the prying minds of all generations of men. But then, in the early days of the nineteenth century, the key was unexpectedly found, and, to the delight of the scholarly world, the Egyptian Pandora box was opened.a

THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

This came about through a study of the famous Rosetta stone, an Egyptian monument now preserved in the British Museum. On this stone three sets of inscriptions are recorded. The upper one, occupying about a fourth of the surface, is a pictured scroll, made up of chains of those strange outlines of serpents, hawks, lions, and so on, which are recognised, even by the least initiated, as hieroglyphics. The middle inscription, made up of lines, angles, and half-pictures, one might suppose to be a sort of abbreviated or shorthand hieroglyphic. It is called the enchorial or demotic character. The third, or lower, inscription is manifestly Greek. It is now known that these three inscriptions are renderings of the same message, and that this message is a “decree of the Priests of Memphis conferring divine honours on Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, King of Egypt, B.C. 195.”

“This stone was found by the French in 1798 among the ruins of Fort St. Julian, near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It passed into the hands of the British by the treaty of Alexandria, and was deposited in the British Museum in the year 1801.”

The value of the Rosetta stone depended on the fact that it gave promise, even when originally inspected, of furnishing a key to the centuries-old mystery of the hieroglyphics. For two thousand years the secret of these strange markings had been forgotten. Nowhere in the world—quite as little in Egypt as elsewhere—had any man the slightest clew to their meaning; there were even those who doubted whether these droll picturings really had any specific meaning, questioning whether they were not merely vague symbols of esoteric religious import and nothing more. And it was the Rosetta stone that gave the answer to these doubters, and restored to the world a lost language and a forgotten literature.

The trustees of the British Museum recognised that the problem of the[252] Rosetta stone was one on which the scientists of the world might well exhaust their ingenuity, and they promptly published to the world a carefully lithographed copy of the entire inscription, so that foreign scholarship had equal opportunity with British to try to solve the riddle. How difficult a riddle it was, even with this key in hand, is illustrated by the fact that, though scholars of all nations brought their ingenuity to bear upon it, nothing more was accomplished for a dozen years than to give authority to three or four guesses regarding the nature of the upper inscriptions, which, as it afterwards proved, were quite incorrect and altogether misleading. This in itself is sufficient to show that ordinary scholarship might have studied the Rosetta stone till the end of time without getting far on the track of its secrets. The key was there, but to apply it required the inspired insight—that is to say, the shrewd guessing power—of genius.

The man who undertook the task had perhaps the keenest scientific imagination and the most versatile profundity of knowledge of his generation—one is tempted to say, of all generations. For he was none other than the extraordinary Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of the vibratory nature of light.

Young had his attention called to the Rosetta stone by accident, and his usual rapacity for knowledge at once led him to speculate as to the possible aid this trilingual inscription might give in the solution of Egyptian problems. Resolving at once to attempt the solution himself, he set to work to learn Coptic, which was rightly believed to represent the nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language. His amazing facility in the acquisition of languages stood him in such good stead that within a year of his first efforts he had mastered Coptic, had assured himself that the ancient Egyptian language was really similar to it, and had even made a tentative attempt at the translation of the Egyptian scroll. His results were only tentative, to be sure. Yet they constituted the very beginnings of our knowledge regarding the meaning of hieroglyphics. Just how far they carried, has been a subject of ardent controversy ever since. Not that there is any doubt about the specific facts; what is questioned is the exact importance of these facts. For it is undeniable that Young did not complete and perfect the discovery, and, as always in such matters, there is opportunity for difference of opinion as to the share of credit due to each of the workers who entered into the discovery.

Young’s specific discoveries were these: (1) that many of the pictures of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects actually delineated; (2) that other pictures are sometimes only symbolic; (3) that plural numbers are represented by repetition; (4) that numerals are represented by dashes; (5) that hieroglyphics may read either from the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the animals and human figures face; (6) that proper names are surrounded by a graven oval ring, making what he called a cartouche; (7) that the cartouches of the preserved portion of the Rosetta stone stand for the name of Ptolemy alone; (8) that the presence of a female figure after such cartouches, in other inscriptions, always denotes the female sex; (9) that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have a positively phonetic value, either alphabetic or syllabic, and (10) that several different characters may have the same phonetic value.

Just what these phonetic values are, Dr. Young pointed out in the case of fourteen characters, representing nine sounds, six of which are accepted[253] to-day as correctly representing the letters to which he ascribed them, and the three others as being correct regarding their essential or consonantal element. It is clear, therefore, that he was on the right track thus far, and on the very verge of complete discovery. But, unfortunately, he failed to take the next step, which would have been to realise that the phonetic values given to the characters within the cartouches were often ascribed to them also when used in the general text of an inscription; in other words, that the use of an alphabet was not confined to proper names. This was the great secret which Young missed, but which his French successor, Jean François Champollion, working on the foundation that Young had laid, was enabled to ferret out.

Young’s initial studies of the Rosetta stone were made in 1814; his later publications bore date of 1819. Champollion’s first announcement of results came in 1822; his second and more important one in 1824. By this time, through study of the cartouches of other inscriptions, he had made out almost the complete alphabet, and the “Riddle of the Sphinx” was practically solved. He proved that the Egyptians had developed a relatively complete alphabet (mostly neglecting the vowels, as early Semitic alphabets did also) centuries before the Phœnicians were heard of in history. What relation this alphabet bore to the Phœnician, we shall have occasion to ask in another connection; for the moment it suffices to know that these strange pictures of the Egyptian scroll are really letters.

Even this statement, however, must in a measure be modified. These pictures are letters and something more. Some of them are purely alphabetical in character, and some are symbolic in another way. Some characters represent syllables. Others stand sometimes as mere representatives of sounds, and again, in a more extended sense, as representatives of things, such as all hieroglyphics doubtless were in the beginning. In a word, this is an alphabet, but not a perfected alphabet such as modern nations are accustomed to; hence the enormous difficulties and complications it presented to the early investigators.

Champollion did not live to clear up all the mysteries of the hieroglyphics. His work was taken up and extended by his pupil Rosellini, and in particular by Richard Lepsius in Germany; followed by M. Renouf, and by Samuel Birch, of the British Museum, and more recently by such well-known Egyptologists as MM. Maspero, Mariette, and Chabas, in France; Drs. Brugsch, Meyer, and Erman in Germany; Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, the present head of the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, and Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie. But the work of later investigators has been largely one of exhumation and translation of records, rather than of finding methods.

Let us now turn more specifically to the writing itself. A glance shows that the objects delineated are, as might be expected, those which were familiar to the people that originated the writing. Here we see Egyptian hawks, serpents, ibises, and the like, and the human figure, depicted in the crude yet graphic way characteristic of Egyptian art. But in addition to these familiar figures there are numerous conventionalised designs. These also, there is reason to believe, were originally representations of familiar objects, but, for convenience of rendering, the pictures have been supplanted by conventionalised designs. It is now known that this writing of the Egyptians was of a most extraordinary compound character. Part of its pictures are used as direct representations of the objects presented. But let us examine some examples:

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But, again, the picture of an object may stand for some idea symbolised by that object, thus becoming an ideograph, as in the following instances:

Here the sacred ibis or the sacred bull symbolises the soul. The bee stands for honey, the eyes for the verb “to see.”

Yet again the Egyptian pictures may stand neither as pictures of things, nor as ideographs, but as having the phonetic value of a syllable.

Such syllabic signs may be used either singly, as above, or in combination, as we shall see illustrated in a moment.

But one other stage of evolution is possible; namely, the use of signs with a purely alphabetical significance. The Egyptians made this step also, and their strangely conglomerate writing makes use of the following alphabet:

In a word, then, the Egyptian writing has passed through all the stages of development, from the purely pictorial to the alphabetical, but with this strange qualification—that while advancing to the later stages it retains the use of the crude earlier forms. As Canon Taylor has graphically phrased it, the Egyptian writing is a completed structure, but one from which the scaffolding has not been removed.

The next step would have been to remove the now useless scaffolding, leaving a purely alphabetical writing as the completed structure. Looking at the matter from the modern standpoint, it seems almost incredible that so intelligent a people as the Egyptians should have failed to make this advance.[255] Yet the facts stand, that as early as the time of the Pyramid Builders, say 4000 years B.C., the Egyptians had made the wonderful analysis of sounds without which the invention of an alphabet would be impossible. They had set aside certain of their hieroglyphic symbols and given them alphabetical significance. They had learned to write their words with the use of this alphabet; and it would seem as if, in the course of a few generations, they must come to see how unnecessary was the cruder form of picture writing which this alphabet would naturally supplant; but in point of fact they never did come to a realisation of this seemingly simple proposition. Generation after generation, and century after century, they continued to use their same cumbersome, complex writing, and it remained for an outside nation to prove that an alphabet pure and simple was capable of fulfilling all the conditions of a written language.

Thus in practice there is found in the hieroglyphics the strangest combination of ideographs, syllabic signs, and alphabetical signs or true letters, used together indiscriminately.

It was, for example, not at all unusual after spelling a word syllabically or alphabetically to introduce a figure giving the idea of the thing intended, and then even to supplement this with a so-called determinative sign or figure:

Here qeften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a monkey is added as a determinative; second, qenu, cavalry, after being spelled is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a horse; third, temati, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures of wings added; and fourth, tatu, quadrupeds, after being spelled, has a picture of a quadruped, and then the picture of a hide, which is the usual determinative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to indicate the plural number.

These determinatives are in themselves so interesting, as illustrations of the association of ideas, that it is worth while to add a few more examples. The word pet, which signifies “heaven,” and which has also the meaning “up” or “even,” is represented primarily by what may be supposed to be a conventionalised picture of the covering to the earth. But this picture used as a determinative is curiously modified in the expression of other ideas, as it symbolises “evening” when a closed flower is added, and “night” when a star hangs in the sky, and “rain or tempest” when a series of zigzag lines, which by themselves represent water, are appended.

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As aids to memory such pictures are obviously of advantage, but this advantage, in the modern view, is outweighed by the cumbrousness of the system of writing as a whole.

Why was such a complex system retained? Chiefly, no doubt, because the Egyptians, like all other highly developed peoples, were conservatives. They held to their old method after a better one had been invented, just as half the Western world to-day holds to an antiquated system of weights and measures after a far simpler system of decimals has been introduced. But this inherent conservatism was enormously aided, no doubt, by the fact that the Egyptian language, like the Chinese, has many words that have a varied significance, making it seem necessary, or at least highly desirable, either to spell such words with different signs, or, having spelled them in the same way, to introduce the varied determinatives.

Here are some examples of discrimination between words of the same sound by the use of different signs:

Here, it will be observed, exactly the same expedient is adopted which we still retain when we discriminate between words of the same sound by different spelling, as, to, two, too; whole, hole; through, threw, etc.

But the more usual Egyptian method was to resort to determinatives; the results seem to us most extraordinary. After what has been said, the following examples will explain themselves:

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It goes without saying that the great mass of people in Egypt were never able to write at all. Had they been accustomed to do so, the Egyptians would have been a nation of artists. Even as the case stands, a remarkable number of men must have had their artistic sense considerably developed, for the birds, animals, and human figures constantly presented on their hieroglyphic scrolls are drawn with a degree of fidelity which the average European of to-day would certainly find far beyond his skill.d

LITERATURE

The literary remains of Egypt have come to us through two channels, one of these being the inscriptions on walls and monuments, to which reference has just been made, and the other the papyrus rolls that constituted books proper. Of course the main body of the monumental inscriptions can only by courtesy be said to belong to the literature of the country. For the most part they are records of political and religious affairs such as hardly come within the domain of literature. On the other hand, there are certain examples of a more distinctly literary character.

One of the most important illustrations of this class of inscription is a poem which recounts certain of the deeds of Ramses the Great, in particular the great fight which this monarch made against the Kheta or Hittites. We have quoted it in the chapter devoted to Ramses II. There are other monumental inscriptions that have a purely historical character, inasmuch as they give lists of names of the kings of the various dynasties. Unfortunately, no one of these chronological inscriptions is complete. The same is true of the most important historical document on papyrus—a document known as the Turin papyrus because it is preserved in the museum in that city. It is worth noting, however, that these chronological lists, as far as they go, tend to support the list of Manetho, to which reference has previously been made. These lists of Manetho, it will be recalled, have come down to us only through certain excerpts made by Josephus and others, the original work having been lost in its entirety. But a comparison of these lists at second-hand with the original Egyptian documents has shown, as Professor Petrie remarks, what a real history the work of Manetho must have been, and how great a deprivation its loss is to the modern historian.

The papyrus rolls on which most of the literary remains of Egypt are inscribed are true books. The book of folded leaves is a comparatively modern invention. Throughout antiquity, including the classical times, the roll constituted the only form of book in use, unless, indeed, we include waxen tablets, which are hardly to be considered books in the proper sense of the word; at least it is not known that they were ever used for the transcription of lengthy works to be placed on sale, though it is probable that authors used them, at least for the rough drafts of their compositions. It is well known that in later classical times the parchment roll came to be substituted for the roll of papyrus, though the latter held its own for a long time, and was still employed exceptionally in the Middle Ages; but the old Egyptian parchment was unknown, and though inscriptions were sometimes made on pieces of linen, the regular material for book-making was papyrus.

The papyrus sheet was made by gluing together pieces of the outer rind or bark of the stem of the papyrus plant, these pieces being placed in two layers and dried under pressure. The sheets of papyrus were from six or[258] eight to about fourteen inches in width, and were often many feet in length. The inscription, made with a reed pen, not altogether unlike a modern quill, was written in columns at right angles to the length of the papyrus sheet, these columns being of varying width, but usually of a size convenient for the scribe in writing and for the reader. If we may judge from a statue that has been preserved, the scribe at work sat with his feet crossed like a modern tailor. Papyrus is, of course, a very fragile and perishable substance; therefore it is only in the dry climate of Egypt that documents of this nature are likely to be preserved. Thanks to the unusual atmosphere of Egypt, however, large numbers of these documents have come down to us, some of them dating from the third millennium B.C. These documents represent various classes of literature. Of historical writings, the most important is the Turin papyrus, already referred to. A still more ancient document is known as the Prisse papyrus, being named after its discoverer, Prisse d’Avenne. Is is virtually a series of essays containing moral precepts and dissertations on the art of right living. Aside from its contents, this particular papyrus roll has unusual interest because it shows us the hieratic writing of the Egyptians in its oldest known form, the hieratic character being a much modified cursive form of hieroglyphic simplified in the interest of rapid writing. It was believed by the French philologist, De Rougé, that this hieratic character formed the basis of the Phœnician alphabet, and a large number of scholars have accepted this conclusion, which, however, is now seemingly about to be abandoned. Other essays of the Egyptians, on medical and mathematical subjects, have been preserved in considerable numbers.

There is yet another form of literary production that is abundantly represented among the papyrus documents. This is the religious work known as the Book of the Dead, a book that was substantially the Bible of the Egyptians, numerous copies of which in whole or in part are still in existence. An additional interest attaches to many copies of the Book of the Dead in the fact that pictures are introduced to illustrate the narrative. One is prone to think of book illustration as a relatively modern art; but in point of fact, as these documents prove, it is an art that was practised by[259] the ancient Egyptians more than two thousand years before the Christian era.

From a purely literary standpoint, the most important remains preserved on papyrus are the various more or less perfect copies of romances and of poems. The romances are somewhat of the character of what we should call fairy tales, though elements of realism are not lacking in some of them; and the poems include love songs and other lyrics. It is extremely difficult to judge the artistic merits of productions in so alien a tongue, and it has been noted by Egyptologists that certain recitals were apparently very popular in Egypt, the merits of which are lost upon the modern interpreter, because even the greatest of modern students can hardly claim a degree of proficiency in the language that suffices for the appreciation of the niceties of usage. There are certain of the tales and poems, however, which in point of conception, thought, and construction must be admitted to have conspicuous merit, even when judged by modern standards.

As soon as the tales of ancient Egypt had been recovered in sufficient number to allow some idea of its popular literature, it was seen that stories of travel and adventure formed a considerable portion. But for a long time no tale of the sea came to light. In fact, it seemed doubtful that such a one existed. The Greek and Latin writings constantly reiterate the statement that the Egyptians regarded the sea as impure, and that none would venture on it of his own will, and upon this authority modern investigators had a well-formed theory that Egypt never had a navy or native sailors.

To them Queen Hatshepsu’s voyages of exploration and the naval victories of Ramses III were the deeds of hired Phœnicians. But the discovery of a tale at St. Petersburg—a tale which takes us far back to the XIIth Dynasty, before any Phœnicians had yet appeared on the shores of the Mediterranean, or Egypt had any thought of Syrian conquest—tends to upset these old ideas, and lead us to the belief that the sailors whom Pharaoh sent for the perfumes and goods of Arabia were native born Egyptians.

The tale of The Castaway was discovered in the Imperial Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg by M. Golenischeff in 1880. No one knows where the papyrus was found, or how it got in Russia, or even came to be in the Hermitage Museum. It has taken its place as a classic of the XIIth Dynasty, as that of the Two Brothers is of the XIXth.

On reading it, one immediately thinks of Sindbad the Sailor, except that the serpents it was Sindbad’s fortune to meet were far from being the amiable creatures described by the Egyptian sailor. There is, indeed, no very good reason to consider the famous tale of the Thousand and One Nights as a modern version of the Egyptian narrative. The sailors’ love for the recital of marvellous adventure is too natural, too far-spread, for us to fasten the one upon the other.

The tale of The Castaway seems clearly to be a theological idea dressed up in romance form. The mysterious island is the Isle of the Double, i.e. the home of dead souls, and the serpent is its guardian. The voyage describes the long journey to the other world—that trip on the mysterious western sea, and the final reaching of the home of the soul. The basic conception of the whole thing is typically Egyptian. Perhaps our estimate of Egyptian literature cannot be completed better than by the presentation of the actual text of this romance. Our version is from G. Maspero’s rendering of M. Golenischeff’s translation of the original papyrus in the Imperial Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.a

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THE CASTAWAY: A TALE OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY

The learned attendant said: “Rejoice thy heart, O my chief, for we have just reached the fatherland; after having manned the prow of the ship and worked the oars, the prow has grazed the sand. All our men are rejoicing and embracing each other, for if others beside ourselves have come safely home, not a man among us is missing, and, moreover, we have gone to the farthest limits of Uauat, and have crossed the regions of Senmut. Here we are returned in peace, and here we are back in our fatherland. Listen, O my chief, for if thou dost not uphold me, I have no support. Wash thee, pour water over thy hands, then go, address thyself to Pharaoh, and may thy heart preserve thy speech from confusion, for if a man’s mouth may save him, on the other hand, his words may cause his face to be covered over;[12] act according to the impulse of thy heart, and anything thou mayest say will put me at ease.

“Now I shall relate to thee what happened to me personally. I set out for the mines of Honhem, and went to sea in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits long and forty wide, with one hundred and fifty of the best sailors in the land of Egypt, men who had seen heaven and earth, and whose hearts were stouter than those of lions. They had foretold that the wind would not be unfavourable, or that we would have none at all; but a gust of wind sprang up as soon as we were on the deep, and as we approached the shore, the breeze freshened and stirred the waves to a height of eight cubits. As for myself, I seized a plank, but the rest perished, without one remaining. A wave of the sea threw me upon an island after I had spent three days with no other companion than my own heart. I lay down to rest in a thicket, and darkness enveloped me; then I employed my legs in search of something for my mouth. I found figs and grapes and many kinds of fine vegetables, berries, nuts, melons of all kinds, fish, birds,—nothing was lacking. I satisfied my hunger, and threw away the surplus of what I had gathered. I dug a ditch, lit a fire, and prepared a sacrifice to the gods.

“Suddenly I heard a voice like thunder, caused, as I believed, by a wave of the sea. The trees trembled, the earth shook; I uncovered my face, and saw that a serpent was approaching. He was thirty cubits long, with a beard that hung down for over two cubits; his body was as if incrusted with gold on a colour of lapis lazuli. He planted himself before me, opened his mouth, and while I remained dumbfounded before him, he said:

“‘What has brought thee, what has brought thee, little one, what has brought thee? If thou delayest to tell me what has brought thee to this isle, I will make thee know what thou art; either thou shalt disappear like a flame, or thou shalt tell me something I never before have heard, and which I knew not before.’ Then he seized me in his mouth, carried me to his lair, and laid me down unharmed; I was safe and sound and whole.

“Then he opened his mouth, and while I remained speechless before him, he said, ‘What has brought thee, what has brought thee, little one, to this isle which is in the sea and whose shores are in the midst of the waves?’

“I replied with arms hanging low before him.[13] I said:[261] ‘I embarked for the mines, by Pharaoh’s order, in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits long and forty wide. It was manned by one hundred and fifty of the best sailors of the land of Egypt, who had seen heaven and earth, and whose hearts were stouter than those of the gods. They had declared that the wind would not be unfavourable, or even that there would be none at all, for each one of them surpassed his companions in the prudence of his heart and the strength of his arms, and I, I yielded to them in nothing; but a storm arose while we were on the deep, and as we approached the shore the gale still freshened and threw up the waves to a height of eight cubits. As for myself, I seized a plank, but the rest on the ship perished and not one remained with me during three days. And now here I am with thee, for I was cast on this isle by a wave of the sea.’

“Thereupon he said to me: ‘Fear not, fear not, little one, let not thy face show sorrow. If thou art here with me, it is because God has let thee live. ’Tis he who has brought thee to the Isle of the Double, where nothing is lacking, and which is filled with all good things. Behold; thou shalt pass month after month here until thou hast stayed four months in this isle, then a ship shall come from thy country with sailors; thou mayest then depart with them to thy country and thou shalt die in thy native city. Let us talk and be happy; whosoever enjoys chatting can support misfortune; let me tell thee what there is on this island. I am here surrounded by my brothers and children, together we are seventy-five serpents, children and retainers, without including a young girl whom Fortune sent me, on whom the fire of heaven fell and burnt to ashes. As for thee, if thou art strong and thy heart is patient thou shalt yet press thy children to thy heart and embrace thy wife; thou shalt again behold thy house, and best of all thou shalt reach thy country and be among thy people.’ Then he bowed to me and I touched the ground before him. ‘Now this is what I have to tell thee on this subject, I shall describe thee to Pharaoh and make thy greatness known to him. I shall send thee paint and offertory perfumes,[14] pomades, cinnamon, and incense employed in the temples, the kind that is offered to the gods. I shall also tell all that, thanks to thee, I was enabled to see, and the whole nation together shall give thee thanks. For thee I shall slay asses in sacrifice. I shall pluck birds for thee, and send ships to thee filled with all the marvels of Egypt, as if to a god, friend of men in a distant country which men know not.’

“He smiled at what I said on account of what was on his heart, and said: ‘Thou art not rich in essences, for all that thou hast enumerated unto me is naught after all but incense, while I, I am lord of the land of Punt, and there have I plenty of essences. But the offertory perfume of which thou speakest of sending me is not plentiful in this isle; but when once thou leavest it, never shalt thou see it again, for it shall be changed into waves.’

“And behold the ship appeared as he had predicted. I perched myself upon a high tree to try to distinguish who were on it. I hastened to tell him the news, but found that he knew it already; and he said to me, ‘Good journey, good journey home, little one, let thine eyes rest upon thy children, and may thy name remain fair in thy city—these are my wishes for thee.’ Then I bent before him with low-hanging arms, and he gave me presents of essences, offertory perfume, pomade, cinnamon, thuya, sapan wood, powdered antimony, cypress, ordinary incense in great quantity,[262] elephants’ teeth, greyhounds, baboons, green monkeys, and all kinds of good and precious things. I put all on board the ship that had come, and prostrating myself, I offered him worship. He said to me, ‘Behold, thou shalt arrive in thy country after two months, thou shalt press thy children to thy heart and thou shalt lie in thy tomb.’ And after that I went down to the shore towards the ship and called to the sailors on board. I gave thanks on the shores to the lord of the isle as well as to those who lived upon it.

“When we had come, the second month, to the city of Pharaoh, just as the other had predicted, we drew near the palace. I entered unto Pharaoh, and gave him all the presents I had brought into the country from that island, and he thanked me before the assembled people. That is why he made an attendant of me, and let me join the king’s courtiers. Look upon me, now that I have reached the shore once more, and having seen and undergone so much. Hear my prayer, for it is good to listen to people. Some one said to me, ‘Become a learned man, my friend, thou wilt arrive at honours,’ and behold I have arrived.”

This is taken from beginning to end as it is found in the book. Who has written it is the scribe with nimble fingers. Ameni-Amen-aa, Life, Health, Strength.c

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XII. CONCLUDING SUMMARY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

In thus following the course of Egyptian history as outlined in the pages of such ancient authorities as Herodotus, Manetho, and Diodorus, and such recent students as Brugsch Pasha, Mariette Pasha, and Professors Erman, Maspero, and Petrie, we have been enabled to gain a tolerably clear picture of the life of the most celebrated nation of antiquity.

There is one feature of that life, however, which this story leaves quite in the dark; namely, its beginnings. The ancients, beyond vaguely hinting at an Ethiopian origin of the Egyptians, confessed themselves in the main totally ignorant of the subject. And it must be confessed that the patient researches of modern workers have not sufficed fully to lift the veil of this ignorance. Theories have been propounded, to be sure. It was broadly suggested by Heeren that one might probably look to India as the original cradle of the Egyptian race. Hebrew scholars, however, naturally were disposed to find that cradle in Mesopotamia, and some later archæologists, among them so great an authority as Maspero, believe that the real beginnings of Egyptian history should be traced to equatorial Africa. But there are no sure data at hand to enable one to judge with any degree of certainty as to which of these hypotheses, if any one of them, is true.

The whole point of view of modern thought regarding this subject has been strangely shifted during the last half century. Up to that time it was the firm conviction of the greater number of scholars that, in dealing with the races of antiquity, we had but to cover a period of some four thousand years before the Christian era. Any hypothesis that could hope to gain credence in that day must be consistent with this supposition. But the anthropologists of the past two generations have quite dispelled that long current illusion, and we now think of the history of man as stretching back tens, or perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years into the past.

Applying a common-sense view to the history of ancient nations from this modified standpoint, it becomes at once apparent how very easy it may be to follow up false clews and arrive at false conclusions. Let us suppose, for example, that, as Heeren believed and as some more modern investigators have contended, the skulls of the Egyptians and those of the Indian races of antiquity, as preserved in the tombs of the respective countries, bear a close resemblance to one another. What, after all, does this prove? Presumably it implies that these two widely separated nations have perhaps had a common[264] origin. But it might mean that the Egyptians had one day been emigrants from India, or conversely, that the Indians had migrated from Egypt, or yet again, that the forbears of both nations had, at a remoter epoch, occupied some other region, perhaps in an utterly different part of the globe from either India or Egypt. And even such a conclusion as this would have to be accepted with a large element of doubt. For, up to the present, it must freely be admitted that the studies of the anthropologists have by no means fixed the physical characters of the different races with sufficient clearness to enable us to predicate actual unity of race or unity of origin from a seeming similarity of skulls alone, or even through more comprehensive comparison of physical traits, were these available.

More than this, any such comparison as that which attempts to link the Egyptians with Indians or Hebrews or Ethiopians is, after all, only a narrow view of the subject extending over a comparatively limited period of time. If it were shown that the first members of that race which came to be known as the Egyptians came to the valley of the Nile from India or Mesopotamia or Ethiopia, the fact would have undoubted historic interest, but it would after all only take us one step farther back along the course of the evolution of that ancient civilisation, and the question would still remain an open one as to what was the real cradle of the race. For in the modern view, as has just been said, when one speaks of the evolution of civilisation, his mind must grasp the idea of tens of thousands of years, during which, the most casual reflection will make it clear, races may have migrated this way and that, northward, eastward, westward, southward, and may have reversed their course of migration over and over again, leaving few traces through which the historian of a later time could follow them in imagination.

There is indeed a tradition, which Diodorus has preserved to us, that the Egyptian of an early day made a great conquering tour through Greece and all of western Asia to India, and back again to the region of the Nile. We have already pointed out that such vague traditions as this probably represent a racial memory of actual historical events, distorted of course as to all details. But all this, it must be repeated over and over again, is only conjecture.

Anthropology is the newest of sciences, and it will scarcely in our day attain a knowledge that will enable the historian to solve the problem of the origin of any one of the remoter races of antiquity. The history of such relatively newer races as the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans may indeed be, at least conjecturally, made out at no distant day; but we must expect that the probably far remoter civilisation of China, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt will long continue to baffle the investigator.

But even present knowledge suffices to change utterly the point of view with which the modern historian regards these so-called ancient races. So long as one regarded the history of the world as comprising only some four thousand years before the Christian era, it was quite clear that in speaking of the earliest historical ages of Egypt, one was dealing with time that might properly be called the childhood of our race. One came to speak trippingly of the “Dawn of Civilisation” as illustrated by the events of the time of the Pyramid Builders. But now all that has changed, and it has become clear that we know nothing of the dawn of civilisation.

The earliest records of Egypt that have come down to us, as illustrated, for example, in the document known as the Prisse papyrus, which is sometimes spoken of as the oldest book in the world, show that, at a time which probably preceded the building of the Pyramids, namely, as early as the[265] IInd Dynasty, the Egyptians regarded the civilisation of their day as already past its prime. Men of that time were already tiring of the degenerate epoch in which they lived, and looking back to the good old days when, as it seemed to them, the Egyptians were a great people. As Dr. Taylor has remarked, it was a curious irony of fate that should have preserved to us such thoughts as these in the oldest written document which has been spared for our inspection. But the moral is quite clear. Professor Mahaffy has well outlined it when he says that one is perhaps justified in feeling that, in point of fact, the old Egyptian who traced the words of the Prisse papyrus was right, and that that ancient time was really not the spring-time of humanity, but the veritable autumn of civilisation. Such a thought as this would have been incomprehensible to the student of any generation before our own, but the long vistas of time that have been opened up to our eyes through the investigations of the last half century make such a strange estimate seem more than plausible. For, after all, what is the sweep of, say, six or eight thousand years which is opened to us as the truly historic period of man’s existence, compared to the tens of thousands of years that preceded?

Almost at the beginning of Egyptian history, as we have seen, a race was in the field which constructed the most gigantic monuments that human ingenuity has even yet conceived. Surely it was no dawn of civilisation that could achieve such works as these. In the broadest view, then, there is no such thing as ancient history open to the observation of the modern historian. All history that we can know from the time of the Pyramid Builders to our own day is in this view properly but recent history, and, as has just been suggested, perhaps only the history of an oscillating decline through the period of the senility of our race. But, however fascinating such a view as this may be, for practical purposes one must look a little more narrowly. Still, the broad view which regards the ancient Egyptian as a brother in blood to the modern European will be the surest ground on which to build a record of universal history.

Professor Mahaffy has pointed out, in the same connection just quoted, that, not merely in practical civilisation, but in the appreciation of all the moral bearings of an advanced life, the Egyptian of two or three, or perhaps five, thousand years before the Christian era, was on a plane differing in no essential from the plane of modern Christendom; and this thought is the one that should perhaps be the most prominently borne in mind by any one who will gain the truest lesson from the study of the sweep of universal history.

So long as the ancient Egyptian is regarded as playing the part of a weird strange member of a civilisation utterly alien to the modern, so long the modern is shut out from the best lessons of that ancient history. But when, on the other hand, one considers the ancient resident of the valley of the Nile as a human being, with desires, emotions, and aspirations almost precisely like our own; a man struggling to solve the same problems of practical socialism that we are struggling for to-day,—then, and then only, can the lessons of ancient Egyptian history be brought home to us in their true meaning and with their true significance. And clearest of all will this significance be, perhaps, if we constantly bear in mind the possibility that the whole sweep of Egyptian history, during the three or four thousand years that separated the Pyramid Builders from the contemporaries of Alexander, was a time of national decay—a dark age, if you will, in Egyptian history.

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It is probably because such a view as this is justified that the current conception has arisen which regards the Egyptian as a mystic, a religion-haunted person; for, in point of fact, it is true that, during the greater part of the period of this Egyptian history, their race was a priest-ridden one. To turn once more to a phrase of Professor Mahaffy’s, “The priesthood of Egypt perhaps embalmed the civilisation of the Nile, but they surely killed it.” Yet there must have been a time when the nation was young and aspiring, when its mixed population—no matter whence derived—had that vigour which is only known to mixed races. There were giants in these days, not in stature, but in ideas; the great Pyramids, the mighty Sphinx, attest their existence. Then there came that development of culture, accompanied of course by a degree of weakened virility, which made the great literature of the XIIth Dynasty possible, and then priestcraft throttled the nation with a grip which, despite severe and heroic struggles, was never altogether shaken off. Just what it means when the clammy hand of a fixed theology clutches at the throat of progressive civilisation, we have a near-at-hand illustration in the European Dark Ages, out of which we, at the beginning of the twentieth century, are only just striving to emerge, after some fourteen or fifteen centuries of combat. Our own experience, then, prepares us well to understand the Egyptian history.

It will doubtless be at least another century, perhaps two or three centuries, before the inhabitants of Christendom can look out upon the world with as rational a view as that which Plato attained in the fifth century B.C., or Cicero in the first, or Marcus Aurelius some two or three centuries later, just as the storm-cloud of Oriental superstition was thickening. So it need not surprise us that Egypt should have suffered in a like manner for a like period.

In the last analysis, then, it would seem that it is the likeness of Egyptian history to our own history, rather than its mysterious differences, that gives it the greatest charm. The differences are the surface details; the resemblances are as deep as human nature itself. In obtaining this conviction, we curiously reversed the old estimate of the strange weird people of the Nile, but in so doing we prepare ourselves far better than we otherwise could to grasp the import of universal history.a

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APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

Such is the land which, viewed with the eyes of later epochs, seems a theatre of marvels; such the people whose fortune it was to step first, or among the first, from the ranks of barbarians into the phalanx of civilisation. How and when and where they took this step—or rather made this long slow climb—we do not know. But they themselves had traditions regarding their origin and early history, some of which have come down to us, chiefly through the medium of Greek historians.

These traditions are not, of course, to be weighed in the same scale with the concrete findings of the modern historical investigators. But neither, on the other hand, should they be altogether set aside. We live in a world curiously woven full of paradox and illusion. Often it chances that the records, even of recent times, which bear the fullest stamp of authenticity, are really nothing more than fables—a mixture of prejudice, and falsehood, and myth, and fetich. And, on the other hand, it may chance that a purely fabulous record contains the very essence of history. Indeed, always, where the tradition is of long standing and widely accepted among a people at some stage of its evolution, such tradition must be redolent of the Zeitgeist of its epoch.

It may be, as such fables commonly are, an impossible tale of gods and godlike heroes, of superhuman feats and supernatural revelations; yet none the less it is in one sense historically true. If nothing more, it is the epitomised history of the psychology of an epoch. But generally it is more than that: it is the idealised expression of a racial memory of actual events—idealised, glorified, transfigured, yet perhaps never actually created save upon a substratum of facts. And how infinitely expressive this idealised record becomes. It condenses the events of centuries, sometimes into a phrase; it embodies the essence of the civilisation of an epoch in a parable.

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Who would give up the Homeric legends, with their records of gods and supernatural heroes, for the realistic recitals of a Thucydides? Who would give up the myths of Greece for a record of actual wars and conquests? Fortunately we have not to make the choice; we may retain the one record to supplement and complete the other. So the historian should do with the early records of every people, wherever accessible.

Apart from the monuments of the Egyptians themselves, the oldest account of this people which has come down to us in profane literature is that given by Herodotus. This account has peculiar interest because it is given by an eye-witness. Herodotus travelled in Egypt some time about the beginning of the fifth century B.C., when Egypt was just being opened up to the foreigner. It does not appear that Herodotus knew the language of the country, and he was, therefore, necessarily debarred from attaining as intimate a knowledge of the people as might otherwise have been possible. It has been suspected also that the Egyptian priests amused themselves not a little in filling the mind of Herodotus with tales of very doubtful authenticity. But be that as it may, Herodotus had a keen eye, and he has left us vivid and interesting descriptions of the many marvels that he saw, some of which are here presented. In making these citations we shall not for the moment attempt the rôle of the critic, accepting rather the entertaining narrative just as it is given.

It will be obvious that in many points this narrative partakes of the ludicrous; yet even these portions of the tale have their value. What Herodotus tells us of the causes of the rises of the Nile, for example, is important as showing the attitude of Greek thought towards this singular phenomenon. The naïve recital in which Herodotus tells how the wind blows the sun from his course, serves in itself to give a clew, not to the mind of Herodotus alone, but to the minds of his contemporaries,—a clew which will be of the utmost value in aiding one to estimate the status of various historical reports that come to us from antiquity. But, on the other hand, what Herodotus has to tell us of his actual observations as to the land and the manners and customs of its people, is of the utmost importance as the contemporary record of a keen observer, and may be accepted, so far as it relates to the actual observations of the author, as historically accurate in the fullest modern sense of the word.

Next to the works of Herodotus, the amplest description of Egypt that has come down to us from antiquity is that of Diodorus the Sicilian. This author was a contemporary of Cæsar and Augustus. He wrote a very famous history of the world under the title of The Historical Library, in forty books, of which only about eleven have reached us intact.

It is not clear whether Diodorus, like Herodotus, visited Egypt in person, but he at least was familiar with all the knowledge and tradition of his time relating to that country. He lived several centuries later than Herodotus, when Egypt had long been the field of foreign invasion. Whatever the Greek and the Roman had been able to learn of Egyptian history was therefore accessible to him, and what he has to tell us of Egypt has the peculiar merit of epitomising practically all classical knowledge of the people of the Nile. Practically nothing more was added to the stock of Western knowledge regarding Egyptian history from his day till the nineteenth century. Certain statements which Diodorus accepted were indeed such as latter-day scepticism would instinctively reject, but, that qualification aside, the history of Egypt as Diodorus relates it was practically her history as known to the Western world until nineteenth century enterprise found the key to[269] the Egyptian monuments. For this reason, if for no other, the story of Diodorus will have peculiar and lasting interest; but in addition to this, the narrative has intrinsic merits that render it well worthy of preservation.

It will be of the utmost interest here, at the very beginning, to compare and contrast his account of Egypt with that of Herodotus. If we shall find in it certain things, such as his account of the spontaneous generation of mice from the mud of the Nile, which seem to justify what has been quoted from the critics as to his credulity, we shall find, on the other hand, in his critical analysis of the different stories as to the origin of the Nile, and, in his finally correct choosing of a true explanation of the annual rise of that river, clear proof that he did possess and did sometimes utilise a keen critical judgment. Meantime it will be equally clear that he possessed, in no small degree, a capacity to write interesting history very different from the more arid records which make up some of his later annals.a

Let us turn, then, to the pages of Herodotus and listen to a classical account of the Nile.

In its more extensive inundations, the Nile does not overflow the Delta only, but part of that territory which is called Libyan, and sometimes the Arabian frontier, and extends about the space of two days’ journey on each side, speaking on an average. Of the nature of this river I could obtain no certain information, from the priests or from others. It was nevertheless my particular desire to know why the Nile, beginning at the summer solstice, continues gradually to rise for the space of one hundred days, after which for the same space it as gradually recedes, remaining throughout the winter, and till the return of the summer solstice, in its former low and quiescent state: but all my inquiries of the inhabitants proved ineffectual, and I was unable to learn why the Nile was thus distinguished in its properties from other streams. I was equally unsuccessful in my wishes to be informed why this river alone wafted no breeze from its surface.

From a desire of gaining a reputation for sagacity, this subject has employed the attention of many among the Greeks. There have been three different modes of explaining it, two of which merit no further attention than barely to be mentioned; one of them affirms the increase of the Nile to be owing to the Etesian winds, which by blowing in an opposite direction, impede the river’s entrance to the sea. But it has often happened that no winds have blown from this quarter, and the phenomenon of the Nile has still been the same. It may also be remarked, that were this the real cause, the same events would happen to other rivers, whose currents are opposed to the Etesian winds, which, indeed, as having a less body of waters, and[270] a weaker current, would be capable of still less resistance: but there are many streams, both in Syria and Libya, none of which exhibit the same appearances with the Nile.

The second opinion is still less agreeable to reason, though more calculated to excite wonder. This affirms, that the Nile has these qualities, as flowing from the Ocean, which entirely surrounds the earth.

The third opinion, though more plausible in appearance, is still more false in reality. It simply intimates that the body of the Nile is formed from the dissolution of snow, which coming from Libya through the regions of Ethiopia, discharges itself upon Egypt. But how can this river, descending from a very warm to a much colder climate, be possibly composed of melted snow? There are many other reasons concurring to satisfy any person of good understanding, that this opinion is contrary to fact. The first and the strongest argument may be drawn from the winds, which are in these regions invariably hot: it may also be observed that rain and ice are here entirely unknown. Now if in five days after a fall of snow it must necessarily rain, which is indisputably the case, it follows that if there were snow in those countries, there would certainly be rain. The third proof is taken from the colour of the natives, who from excessive heat are universally black; moreover, the kites and the swallows are never known to migrate from this country: the cranes also, flying from the severity of a Scythian winter, pass that cold season here. If, therefore, it snowed although but little in those places through which the Nile passes, or in those where it takes its rise, reason demonstrates that none of the above-mentioned circumstances could possibly happen.

The argument which attributes to the ocean these phenomena of the Nile, seems rather to partake of fable than of truth or sense. For my own part, I know no river of the name of Oceanus; and am inclined to believe that Homer, or some other poet of former times, first invented and afterwards introduced it in his compositions.

But as I have mentioned the preceding opinions only to censure and confute them, I may be expected perhaps to give my own sentiments on this subject. It is my opinion that the Nile overflows in the summer season, because in the winter the sun, driven by the storms from his usual course, ascends into the higher regions of the air above Libya. My reason may be explained without difficulty; for it may be easily supposed, that to whatever region this power more nearly approaches, the rivers and streams of that country will be proportionably dried up and diminished.

If I were to go more at length into the argument, I should say that the whole is occasioned by the sun’s passage through the higher parts of Libya. For as the air is invariably serene, and the heat always tempered by cooling breezes, the sun acts there as it does in the summer season, when his place is in the centre of the heavens. The solar rays absorb the aqueous particles, which their influence forcibly elevates into the higher regions; here they are received, separated, and dispersed by the winds. And it may be observed, that the south and southwest, which are the most common winds in this quarter, are of all others most frequently attended with rain: it does not, however, appear to me that the sun remits all the water which he every year absorbs from the Nile; some is probably withheld. As winter disappears, he returns to the middle place of the heavens, and again by evaporation draws to him the waters of the rivers, all of which are then found considerably increased by the rains, and rising to their extreme heights. But in summer, from the want of rain, and from the attractive power of the sun, they are[271] again reduced; but the Nile is differently circumstanced, it never has the benefit of rains, whilst it is constantly acted upon by the sun,—a sufficient reason why it should in the winter season be proportionably lower than in summer. In winter the Nile alone is diminished by the influence of the sun, which in summer attracts the water of the rivers indiscriminately; I impute, therefore, to the sun the remarkable properties of the Nile.

To the same cause is to be ascribed, as I suppose, the state of the air in that country, which from the effect of the sun is always extremely rarefied, so that in the higher parts of Libya there prevails an eternal summer. If it were possible to produce a change in the seasons, and to place the regions of the north in those of the south, and those of the south in the north, the sun, driven from his place by the storms of the north, would doubtless affect the higher parts of Europe, as it now does those of Libya. It would also, I imagine, then act upon the waters of the Ister, as it now does on those of the Nile.

That no breeze blows from the surface of the river, may, I think, be thus accounted for: Where the air is in a very warm and rarefied state, wind can hardly be expected, this generally rising in places which are cold. Upon this subject I shall attempt no further illustration, but leave it in the state in which it has so long remained.

In all my intercourse with Egyptians, Libyans, and Greeks, I have only met with one person who pretended to have any knowledge of the sources of the Nile. This was the priest who had the care of the sacred treasures in the temple of Minerva, at Saïs. He assured me, that on this subject he possessed the most unquestionable intelligence, though his assertions never obtained my serious confidence. He informed me, that betwixt Syene, a city of the Thebaïd, and Elephantine, there were two mountains, respectively terminating in an acute summit: the name of the one was Crophi, of the other Mophi. He affirmed, that the sources of the Nile, which were fountains of unfathomable depth, flowed from the centres of these mountains; that one of these streams divided Egypt, and directed its course to the north; the other in like manner flowed towards the south, through Ethiopia. To confirm his assertion, that those springs were unfathomable, he told me, that Psammetichus [Psamthek I], sovereign of the country, had ascertained it by experiment; he let down a rope of the length of several thousand orgyiæ, but could find no bottom. This was the priest’s information, on the truth of which I presume not to determine. If such an experiment was really made, there might perhaps in these springs be certain vortices, occasioned by the reverberation of the water from the mountains, of force sufficient to buoy up the sounding line, and prevent its reaching the bottom.

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I was not able to procure any other intelligence than the above, though I so far carried my enquiry, that, with the view of making observation, I proceeded myself to Elephantine: of the parts which lie beyond that city, I can only speak from the information of others. Beyond Elephantine this country becomes rugged; in advancing up the stream it will be necessary to hale the vessel on each side by a rope, such as is used for oxen. If this should give way, the impetuosity of the stream forces the vessel violently back again. To this place from Elephantine is a four days’ voyage.

Thus, without computing that part of it which flows through Egypt, the course of the Nile is known to the extent of four months’ journey, partly by land and partly by water; for it will be found on experience, that no one can go in a less time from Elephantine to the Automoli. It is certain that the Nile rises in the west, but beyond the Automoli all is uncertainty, this part of the country being, from the excessive heat, a rude and uncultivated desert.

It may not be improper to relate an account which I received from certain Cyrenæans. On an expedition which they made to the oracle of Ammon, they said they had an opportunity of conversing with Etearchus, the sovereign of the country: among other topics the Nile was mentioned, and it was observed, that the particulars of its source were hitherto entirely unknown. Etearchus informed them, that some Nassamonians once visited his court; (these are a people of Africa who inhabit the Syrtes, and a tract of land which from thence extends towards the east) on his making enquiry of them concerning the deserts of Libya, they related the following incident: some young men, who were sons of persons of distinction, had on their coming to man’s estate signalised themselves by some extravagance of conduct. Among other things, they deputed by lot five of their companions to explore the solitudes of Libya, and to endeavour at extending their discoveries beyond all preceding adventurers.

All that part of Libya towards the Northern Ocean, from Egypt to the promontory of Soloëis, which terminates the third division of the earth, is inhabited by the different nations of the Libyans, that district alone excepted, in possession of the Greeks and Phœnicians. The remoter parts of Libya beyond the seacoast, and the people who inhabit its borders, are infested by various beasts of prey; the country yet more distant is a parched and immeasurable desert. The young men left their companions, being well provided with water and with food, and first proceeded through the region which was inhabited; they next came to that which was infested by wild beasts, leaving which, they directed their course westward, through the desert.

After a journey of many days, over a barren and sandy soil, they at length discerned some trees growing in a plain; these they approached, and seeing fruit upon them, they gathered it. Whilst they were thus employed, some men of dwarfish stature came where they were, seized their persons, and carried them away. They were mutually ignorant of each other’s language, but the Nassamonians were conducted over many marshy grounds to a city, in which all the inhabitants were of the same diminutive appearance, and of a black colour. This city was washed by a great river, which flowed from west to east, and abounded in crocodiles.

Such was the conversation of Etearchus, as it was related to me; he added, as the Cyrenæans further told me, that the Nassamonians returned to their own country, and reported the men whom they had met to be all of them magicians. The river which washed their city, according to the conjecture of Etearchus, which probability confirms, was the Nile. The Nile[273] certainly rises in Libya, which it divides; and if it be allowable to draw conclusions from things which are well known, concerning those which are uncertain and obscure, it takes a similar course with the Ister. This river, commencing at the city of Pyrene, among the Celtæ, flows through the centre of Europe. These Celtæ are found beyond the Columns of Hercules; they border on the Cynesians, the most remote of all the nations who inhabit the western parts of Europe. At that point which is possessed by the Istrians, a Milesian colony, the Ister empties itself into the Euxine.

The sources of the Ister, as it passes through countries well inhabited, are sufficiently notorious; but of the fountains of the Nile, washing as it does the rude and uninhabitable deserts of Libya, no one can speak with precision. All the knowledge which I have been able to procure from the most diligent and extensive enquiries, I have before communicated. Through Egypt it directs its course towards the sea. Opposite to Egypt are the mountains of Cilicia, from whence to Sinope, on the Euxine, a good traveller may pass in five days: on the side immediately opposite to Sinope, the Ister is poured into the sea. Thus the Nile, as it traverses Libya, may properly enough be compared to the Ister. But on this subject I have said all that I think necessary.b

ANOTHER ANCIENT ACCOUNT OF THE NILE

The River Nile, says Diodorus, breeds many Creatures of several Forms and Shapes, amongst which, Two are especially remarkable, the Crocodile and the Horse as it’s call’d: Amongst these the Crocodile of the least Creature becomes the greatest; for it lays an Egg much of the bigness of that of a Goose, and after the young is hatcht, it grows to the length of Sixteen Cubits, and lives to the Age of a Man: It wants a Tongue, but has a Body naturally arm’d in a wonderful manner. For its Skin is cover’d all over with Scales of an extraordinary hardness; many sharp Teeth are rang’d on both sides its Jaws, and Two of them are much bigger than the rest. This Monster does not only devour Men, but other Creatures that come near the River. His Bites are sharp and destructive, and with his Claws he tears his Prey cruelly in Pieces, and what Wounds he makes, no Medicine or Application can heal. The Egyptians formerly catcht these Monsters with Hooks, baited with raw Flesh; but of later times, they have us’d to take ’em with strong Nets like Fishes; sometimes they strike them on the Head with Forks of Iron, and so kill them. There’s an infinite Multitude of these Creatures in the River and the Neighbouring Pools, in regard they are great Breeders, and are seldom kill’d. For the Crocodile is ador’d as a God by some of the Inhabitants; and for Strangers to hunt and destroy them is to no purpose, for their Flesh is not eatable. But Nature has provided relief against the increase of this destructive Monster; for the Ichneumon, as it’s call’d (of the Bigness of a little Dog) running up and down near the Waterside, breaks all the Eggs laid by this Beast, wherever he finds them; and that which is most to be admir’d, is, that he does this not for Food or any other Advantage, but out of a natural Instinct for the meer Benefit of Mankind.

The Beast call’d the River Horse, is Five Cubits long, Four Footed, and cloven Hoof’d like to an Ox. He has Three Teeth or Tushes on either side his Jaw, appearing outwards larger than those of a Wild-Boar; as to his Ears, Tayl and his Neighing, he’s like to a Horse. The whole Bulk of his Body is not much unlike an Elephant; his Skin is firmer and thicker almost[274] than any other beast. He lives both on Land and Water; in the Day time he lies at the Bottom of the River, and in the Night time comes forth to Land, and feeds upon the Grass and Corn. If this Beast were so fruitful as to bring forth Young every Year, he would undo the Husbandman, and destroy a great part of the Corn of Egypt. He’s likewise by the help of many Hands often caught, being struck with Instruments of Iron; for when he is found, they hem him round with their Boats, and those on Board wound him with forked Instruments of Iron, cast at him as so many Darts; and having strong Ropes to the Irons, they fix in him, they let him go till he loses his Blood, and so dies: His Flesh is extraordinary hard, and of ill digestion. There’s nothing in his inner Parts that can be eaten, neither his Bowels, nor any other of his Intrails.

Besides these before mention’d, Nile abounds with multitudes of all sorts of Fish; not only such as are fresh taken to supply the Inhabitants at hand, but an innumerable Number likewise which they salt up to send Abroad. To conclude, no River in the World is more Beneficial and Serviceable to Mankind, than Nile.

Its Inundation begins at the Summer Solstice, and increases till the Equinoctial in Autumn; during which time he brings in along with him new Soyl, and waters as well the Till’d and Improv’d Ground as that which lies waste and untill’d, as long as it pleases the Husbandman; for the Water flowing gently and by degrees, they easily divert its Course, by casting up small Banks of Earth; and then by opening a Passage for it, as easily turn it over their Land again, if they see it needful. It’s so very advantageous to the Inhabitants, and done with so little pains, that most of the Country People turn in their Cattel into the sow’d Ground to eat, and tread down the Corn, and Four or Five Months after they reap it. Some lightly run over the Surface of the Earth with a Plow, after the Water is fallen, and gain a mighty Crop without any great Cost or Pains: But Husbandry amongst all other Nations is very laborious and chargable, only the Egyptians gather their Fruits with little Cost or Labour. That part of the Country likewise where Vines are planted after this watering by the Nile, yields a most plentiful Vintage. The Fields that after the Inundation are pastur’d by their Flocks, yield them this advantage, that the Sheep Yean twice in a[275] Year, and are shorn as often. This Increase of the Nile is wonderful to Beholders, and altogether incredible to them that only hear the Report; for when other Rivers about the Solstice fall and grow lower all Summer long, this begins to increase, and continues to rise every day, till it comes to that height that it overflows almost all Egypt; and on the contrary in the same manner in the Winter Solstice, it falls by degrees till it wholly returns into its proper Channel. And in regard the Land of Egypt lies low and Champain, the Towns, Cities and Country Villages that are built upon rising-ground (cast up by Art) look like the Islands of the Cyclades: Many of the Cattel sometimes are by the River intercepted, and so are drown’d; but those that fly to the higher Grounds are preserv’d. During the time of the Inundation, the Cattel are kept in the Country Towns and small Cottages, where they have Food and Fodder before laid up and prepar’d for them. But the common People now at liberty from all Imployments in the Field, indulge themselves in Idleness, feasting every day, and giving themselves up to all sorts of Sports and Pleasures. Yet out of fear of the Inundation, a Watch Tower is built in Memphis, by the Kings of Egypt, where those that are imploy’d to take care of this concern, observing to what height the River rises, send Letters from one City to another, acquainting them how many Cubits and Fingers the River rises, and when it begins to decrease; and so the People coming to understand the Fall of the Waters, are freed from their fears, and all presently have a foresight what plenty of Corn they are like to have; and this Observation has been Registred from time to time by the Egyptians for many Generations.

There are great Controversies concerning the Reasons of the overflowing of Nile, and many both Philosophers and Historians have endeavour’d to declare the Causes of it. Some who have attempted to give their Reasons, have been very wide from the Mark. For as for Hellanicus, Cadmus, Hecatæus, and such like ancient Authors, they have told little but frothy Stories, and meer Fables. Herodotus, above all other Writers very industrious, and well acquainted with General History, made it his Business to find out the Causes of these things, but what he says is notwithstanding very doubtful, and some things seem to be repugnant and contradictory one to another.

No Writer hitherto has pretended that he himself ever saw or heard of any one else that affirm’d he had seen the Spring-heads of Nile: All therefore amounting to no more but Opinion and Conjecture, the Priests of Egypt affirm that it comes from the Ocean, which flows round the whole Earth: But nothing that they say is upon any solid grounds, and they resolve Doubts by things that are more doubtful; and to prove what they say, they bring Arguments that have need to be proved themselves.

Thales, who is reckon’d one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, is of Opinion that the Etesean Winds that beat fiercely upon the Mouth of the River, give a check and stop to the Current, and so hinder it from falling into the Sea, upon which the River swelling, and its Channel fill’d with Water, at length overflows the Country of Egypt, which lies flat and low. Though this seem a plausible Reason, yet it may be easily disprov’d. For if it were true what he says, then all the Rivers which run into the Sea against the Etesean Winds would overflow in like manner; which being never known in any other part of the World, some other reason and more agreeable to Truth must of necessity be sought for. Anaxagoras the Philosopher ascribes the Cause to the melting of the Snow in Ethiopia, whom the Poet Euripides (who was his Scholar) follows.

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Neither is it any hard Task to confute this Opinion, since it’s apparent to all, that by reason of the parching Heats, there’s no Snow in Ethiopia at that time of the Year. For in these Countries there’s not the least Sign either of Frost, Cold or any other effects of Winter, especially at the time of the overflowing of Nile. And suppose there be abundance of Snow in the higher Parts of Ethiopia, yet what is affirm’d is certainly false: For every River that is swell’d with Snow, fumes up in cold Fogs, and thickens the Air; but about Nile, only above all other Rivers, neither mists gather, nor are there any cold Breezes, nor is the Air gross and thick. Herodotus says that Nile is such in its own nature, as it seems to be in the time of its increase; for that in Winter, when the Sun moves to the South, and runs its daily course directly over Africa, it exhales so much Water out of Nile, that it decreases against Nature; and in Summer when the Sun returns to the North, the Rivers of Greece, and the Rivers of all other Northern Countries, fall and decrease; and therefore that it is not so strange for Nile about Summer time to increase, and in Winter to fall and grow lower. But to this it may be answer’d, that if the Sun exhale so much moisture out of Nile in Winter time, it would do the like in other Rivers in Africa, and so they must fall as well as Nile, which no where happens throughout all Africa, and therefore this Author’s Reason is frivolous; for the Rivers of Greece rise not in the Winter, by reason of the remoteness of the Sun, but by reason of the great Rains that fall at that time. Ephorus, who gives the last account of the thing, endeavours to ascertain the Reason, but seems not to find out the Truth.

The whole Land of Egypt (says he) is cast up from the River, and the Soyl is of a loose and spungy nature, and has in it many large Clifts and hollow Places, wherein are abundance of Water, which in the Winter-time is frozen up, and in the Summer issues out on every side, like Sweat from the Pores, which occasions the River Nile to rise. This Writer does not only betray his own Ignorance of the nature of Places in Egypt, that he never saw them himself, but likewise that he never was rightly inform’d by any that was acquainted with them. And indeed no Man is to expect any certainty from Ephorus, who may be palpably discern’d not to make it his business in many things to declare the Truth.

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The Philosophers indeed in Memphis have urg’d strong Reasons of the Increase of Nile, which are hard to be confuted; and though they are improbable, yet many agree to them. For they divide the Earth into Three Parts, one of which is that wherein we inhabit; another quite contrary to these Places in the Seasons of the Year; the Third lying between these Two, which they say is uninhabitable by reason of the scorching heat of the Sun; and therefore if Nile should overflow in the Winter-time, it would be clear and evident that its Source would arise out of our Zone, because then we have the most Rain: But on the contrary being that it rises in Summer, it’s very probable that in the Country opposite to us it’s Winter-time, where then there’s much Rain, and that those Floods of Water are brought down thence to us: And therefore that none can ever find out the Head-Springs of Nile, because the River has its Course through the opposite Zone; which is uninhabited. And the exceeding sweetness of the Water, they say, is the Confirmation of this Opinion; for passing through the Torrid Zone, the Water is boil’d, and therefore this River is sweeter than any other in the World; for Heat does naturally dulcorate Water. But this reason is easily refuted; for it’s plainly impossible that the River should rise to that height, and come down to us from the opposite Zone; especially if it be granted that the Earth is round. But if any yet shall be so obstinate as to affirm it is so as the philosophers have said, I must in short say it’s against and contrary to the Laws of Nature.

For being they hold Opinions that in the nature of the things can hardly be disprov’d, and place an inhabitable part of the World between us and them that are opposite to us; they conclude, that by this device, they have made it impossible, and out of the reach of the Wit of Man to confute them. But it is but just and equal, that those who affirm any thing positively, should prove what they say, either by good Authority or strength of Reason. How comes it about that only the River Nile should come down to us from the other opposite Zone? Have we not other Rivers that this may be as well apply’d to? As to the Causes alledg’d for the sweetness of the Water, they are absurd: For if the Water be boyl’d with the parching Heat, and thereupon becomes sweet, it would have no productive quality, either of Fish or other Kinds of Creatures and Beasts; for all Water whose Nature is chang’d by Fire, is altogether incapable to breed any living thing, and therefore being that the Nature of Nile contradicts this decoction and boyling of the Water, we conclude that the Causes alledg’d of its increase are false.

But to the true cause, Agartharchides of Cnidus comes nearest. For he says, that in the Mountainous parts of Ethiopia, there are Yearly continual Rains from the Summer Solstice to the Equinox in Autumn, and therefore there’s just cause for Nile to be low in the Winter, which then flows only from its own natural Spring-heads, and to overflow in Summer through the abundance of Rains. And though none hitherto have been able to give a Reason of these Inundations, yet he says his Opinion is not altogether to be rejected; for there are many things that are contrary to the Rules of Nature, for which none are able to give any substantial Reason. That which happens in some parts of Asia, he says, gives some confirmation to his Opinion. For in the Confines of Scythia, near Mount Caucasus, after the Winter is over, he affirms that abundance of Snow falls every Year for many Days together: And that in the Northern Parts of India, at certain Times, there falls abundance of Hail, and of an incredible Bigness: And that near the River Hydaspis, in Summer-time, it rains continually; and the same happens in Ethiopia[278] for many Days together; and that this disorder of the Air whirling about, occasions many Storms of Rain in Places near adjoyning; and that therefore it’s no wonder if the Mountainous Parts of Ethiopia, which lies much higher than Egypt, are soakt with continual Rains, wherewith the River being fill’d, overflows; especially since the natural Inhabitants of the Place affirm, that thus it is in their Country. And though these things now related, are in their nature contrary to those in our own Climates, yet we are not for that Reason to disbelieve them. For with us the South Wind is cloudy and boysterous, whereas in Ethiopia it’s calm and clear; and that the North Winds in Europe are fierce and violent, but in those Regions low and almost insensible.

But however (after all) though we could heap up variety of Arguments against all these Authors concerning the Inundation of Nile, yet those which we have before alledg’d shall suffice, lest we should transgress those bounds of Brevity which at the first we propos’d to our selves.

A GREEK VIEW OF THE ORIGINS OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

The Egyptians report, says Diodorus, that at the beginning of the World, the first Men were created in Egypt, both by reason of the happy Climate of the Country, and the nature of the River Nile. For this River being very Fruitful, and apt to bring forth many animals, yields of it self likewise Food and Nourishment for the things produc’d. For it yields the Roots of Canes, the Fruit of the Lote-Tree, the Egyptian Bean, that which they call Corseon, and such like Rarities, always ready at hand.

And that all living Creatures were first produc’d among them, they use this Argument, that even at this day, about Thebes at certain Times, such vast Mice are bred, that it causes admiration to the Beholders; some of which to the Breast and Fore-feet are animated and begin to move, and the rest of the Body (which yet retains the nature of the Soyl) appears without form.

Whence it’s manifest, that in the beginning of the World, through the Fertileness of the Soyl the first Men were form’d in Egypt, being that in no other parts of the World any of these Creatures are produc’d; only in Egypt these supernatural Births may be seen.

The first Generation of Men in Egypt, therefore contemplating the Beauty of the Superior World, and admiring with astonishment the frame and order of the Universe, judg’d there were Two chief Gods that were Eternal, that is to say, The Sun and the Moon, the first of which they call’d Osiris, and the other Isis, both Names having proper Etymologies; for Osiris in the Greek Language, signifies a Thing with many Eyes, which may be very properly apply’d to the Sun darting his Rays into every Corner, and as it were with so many Eyes viewing and surveying the whole Land and Sea.

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Some also of the antient Greek Mythologists call Osiris Dionysus, and sirname him Sirius. Some likewise set him forth cloath’d with the spotted Skin of a Fawn (call’d Nebris) from the variety of Stars that surround him.

Isis likewise being interpreted, signifies Antient, that Name being ascrib’d to the Moon from Eternal Generations. They add likewise to her, Horns, because her Aspect is such in her Increase and in her Decrease, representing a Sickle; and because an Ox among the Egyptians is offer’d to her in Sacrifice. They hold that these Gods govern the whole World, cherishing and increasing all things; and divide the Year into Three Parts (that is to say, Spring, Summer, and Autumn) by an invisible Motion perfecting their constant course in that time: And though they are in their Natures very differing one from another, yet they compleat the whole Year with a most excellent Harmony and Consent. They say that these Gods in their Natures do contribute much to the Generation of all things, the one being of a hot and active Nature, the other moist and cold, but both having something of the Air; and that by these, all things are brought forth and nourish’d: And therefore that every particular Being in the Universe is perfected and compleated by the Sun and Moon, whose Qualities, as before declar’d, are Five; A Spirit or quickning Efficacy, Heat or Fire, Dryness or Earth, Moisture or Water, and Air, of which the World does consist, as a Man made up of Head, Hands, Feet, and other parts. These Five they reputed for Gods, and the People of Egypt who were the first that spoke articulately, gave Names proper to their several Natures, according to the Language they then spake. And therefore they call’d the Spirit Jupiter, which is such by Interpretation, because a quickning Influence is deriv’d from this into all Living Creatures, as from the original Principle; and upon that account he is esteem’d the common Parent of all things.

Fire they call’d by Interpretation Vulcan, and him they had in Veneration as a Great God, as he that greatly contributed to the Generation and Perfection of all Beings whatsoever.

The Earth, as the Common Womb of all Productions, they call’d Metera, as the Greeks in process of time, by a small alteration of one Letter, and an omission of Two Letters, call’d the Earth Demetra, which was antiently call’d Gen Metera, or the Mother Earth.

Water or Moisture, the Antients call’d Oceanus; which by Interpretation is a nourishing Mother, and so taken by some of the Grecians.

But the Egyptians account their Nile to be Oceanus, at which all the Gods were Born. For in Egypt only among all the Countries in the World, are many Cities built by the ancient Gods, as by Jupiter, Sol, Mercury, Apollo, Pan, Elithia, and many others.

To the Air they gave the Name of Minerva, signifying something proper to the nature thereof, and call’d her the Daughter of Jupiter, and counted a Virgin, because the Air naturally is not subject to Corruption, and is in the highest part of the Universe; whence rises the Fable, that she was the issue of Jupiter’s Brain: They say she’s call’d also Tritogeneia, or Thrice Begotten, because she changes her natural Qualities thrice in the Year, the Spring, Summer, and Winter; and that she was call’d Glaucopis, not that she hath Grey Eyes (as some of the Greeks have suppos’d, for that’s a weak Conceit) but because the Air seems to be of a Grey Colour, to the view. They report likewise, that these Five Gods travel through the whole World, representing themselves to Men sometimes in the shapes of Sacred living Creatures, and sometimes in the Form of Men, or some other Representation. And this is[280] not a Fable, but very possible, if it be true, that these generate all things; and the Poet [Homer] who travell’d into Egypt, in some part of his Works, affirms this Appearance, as he learnt it from their Priests,

And these are the Stories told by the Egyptians of the Heavenly and Immortal Gods. And besides these, they say there are others that are Terrestrial, which were begotten of these former Gods, and were Originally Mortal men, but by reason of their Wisdom and Beneficence to all Mankind, have obtain’d Immortality, of which some have been Kings of Egypt. Some of whom by interpretation, have had the same Names with the Celestial Gods, others have kept their own proper Names. For they report that Sol, Saturn, Rhea, Jupiter (surnam’d by some Ammon), Juno, Vulcan, Vesta, and lastly, Mercury, reign’d in Egypt; and that Sol was the first King of Egypt, whose Name was the same with the Celestial Planet call’d Sol.

But there are some of the Priests who affirm Vulcan to be the first of Kings, and that he was advanc’d to that Dignity upon the account of being the first that found out the use of Fire, which was so beneficial to all Mankind. For a Tree in the Mountains hapning to be set on Fire by Lightning, the Wood next adjoyning was presently all in a Flame; and Vulcan thereupon coming to the Place, was mightily refresht by the heat of it, being then Winter Season; and when the Fire began to fail, he added more combustible Matter to it, and by that means preserving it, call’d in other Men to enjoy the Benefit of that which he himself was the first Inventer, as he gave out.

Afterwards they say Saturn reign’d, and marry’d his Sister Rhea, and that he begat of her Osiris and Isis; but others say, Jupiter and Juno, who for their great Virtues, rul’d over all the World. That of Jupiter and Juno were born Five Gods, one upon every day of the Five Egyptian intercalary Days. The Names of these Gods are Osiris, Isis, Typhon, Apollo and Venus. That Osiris was interpreted Bacchus, and Isis plainly Ceres. That Osiris marry’d Isis, and after he came to the Kingdom, did much, and perform’d many things for the common Benefit and Advantage of Mankind. For he was the first that forbad Men eating one another; and at the same time Isis found out the way of making of Bread of Wheat and Barley, which before grew here and there in the Fields amongst other common Herbs and Grass, and the use of it unknown: And Osiris teaching the way and manner of Tillage, and well management of the Fruits of the Earth, this change of Food became grateful; both because it was naturally sweet and delicious, and Men were thereby restrain’d from the mutual Butcheries of one another: For an evidence of this first finding out the use of these Fruits, they alledge an antient Custom amongst them: For even at this day, in the time of Harvest, the Inhabitants offer the first Fruits of the Ears of Corn, howling and wailing about the Handfuls they offer, and invoking this Goddess Isis: And this they do in return of due Honour to her for that Invention at the first. In some Cities also, when they celebrate the Feast of Isis in a Pompous Procession, they carry about Vessels of Wheat and Barley, in memory of the first Invention, by the care and industry of this Goddess. They say likewise, that Isis made many Laws for the good of Human Society, whereby[281] Men were restrain’d from lawless Force and Violence one upon another, out of fear of Punishment. And therefore Ceres was call’d by the ancient Greeks, Themophorus (that is) Lawgiver, being the Princess that first constituted Laws for the better Government of her People.

Osiris moreover built Thebes in Egypt, with an Hundred Gates, and call’d it after his Mother’s Name: But in following Times, it was call’d Diospolis, and Thebes; of whose first Founder not only Historians, but the Priests of Egypt themselves, are much in doubt. For some say that it was not built by Osiris, but many Years after by a King of Egypt, whose History we shall treat of hereafter in its proper place. They report likewise, that he built Two magnificent Temples, and Dedicated them to his Parents, Jupiter and Juno; and likewise Two Golden Altars, the greater to the great God Jupiter; the other to his Father Jupiter, who had formerly reign’d there, whom they call Ammon. That he also erected Golden Altars to other Gods, and instituted their several Rites of Worship, and appointed Priests to have the Oversight and Care of the Holy things. In the time of Osiris and Isis, Projectors and ingenious Artists were in great honour and Esteem; and therefore in Thebes there were then Goldsmiths and Braziers, who made Arms and Weapons for the Killing of Wild Beasts, and other Instruments for the husbanding of the Ground, and improvement of Tillage; besides Images of the Gods, and Altars in Gold. They say that Osiris was much given to Husbandry, that he was the Son of Jupiter, brought up in Nysa, a Town of Arabia the Happy, near to Egypt, call’d by the Greeks Dionysus, from his Father, and the Place of his Education.

Here near unto Nysa (they say) he found out the use of the Vine, and there planting it, was the first that drank Wine; and taught others how to plant it and use it, and to gather in their Vintage, and to keep and preserve it. Above all others, he most honoured Hermes, one of an admirable Ingenuity, and quick Invention, in finding out what might be useful to Mankind. This Hermes was the first (as they report) that taught how to speak distinctly and articulately, and gave Names to many things that had none before. He found out Letters, and instituted the Worship of the Gods; and was the first that observ’d the Motion of the Stars, and invented Musick; and taught the manner of Wrestling; and invented Arithmetick, and the Art of curious Graving and Cutting of Statues. He first found out the Harp with Three Strings, in resemblance of the Three Seasons of the Year, causing Three several Sounds, the Treble, Base and Mean. The Treble, to represent the Summer; The Base, the Winter; and the Mean, the Spring. He was the first that taught the Greeks Eloquence; thence he’s call’d Hermes, a Speaker or Interpreter. To conclude, he was Osiris’s Sacred Scribe, to whom he communicated all his Secrets, and was chiefly steer’d by his Advice in every thing. He (not Minerva, as the Greeks affirm) found out the use of the Olive-tree, for the making of Oyl.

It’s moreover reported, that Osiris being a Prince of a publick Spirit, and very ambitious of Glory, rais’d a great Army, with which he resolv’d to go through all parts of the World that were inhabited, and to teach Men how to plant Vines, and to sow Wheat and Barly. For he hop’d that if he could civilize Men, and take them off from their rude and Beast-like Course of Lives, by such a publick good and advantage, he should raise a Foundation amongst all Mankind, for his immortal Praise and Honour, which happen’d accordingly. For not only that Age, but Posterity ever after honour’d those among the chiefest of their Gods, that first found out their proper and ordinary Food. Having therefore settl’d his Affairs in Egypt, and[282] committed the Government of his whole Kingdom to his Wife Isis, he join’d with her Mercury, as her chief Councellor of State, because he far excell’d all others in Wisdom and Prudence. But Hercules his near Kinsman, he left General of all his Forces within his Dominions, a Man admir’d by all for his Valour and Strength of Body. As to those parts which lay near Phœnicia, and upon the Sea-Coasts of them, he made Busiris Lord Lieutenant, and of Ethiopia and Lybia, Anteus.

Then marching out of Egypt, he began his Expedition, taking along with him his Brother, whom the Greeks call’d Apollo. This Apollo is reported to have discover’d the Laurel-Tree, which all Dedicate especially to this God. To Osiris they attribute the finding out of the Ivy-Tree, and dedicate it to him, as the Greeks do to Bacchus: And therefore in the Egyptian Tongue, they call Ivy Osiris’s Plant, which they prefer before the Vine in all their Sacrifices, because this loses its Leaves, and the other always continues fresh and green: Which Rule the Ancients have observ’d in other Plants, that are always green, dedicating Mirtle to Venus, Laurel to Apollo, and the Olive-Tree to Pallas.

It’s said, that Two of his Sons accompany’d their Father Osiris in this Expedition, one call’d Anubis, and the other Macedo, both valiant Men: Both of them wore Coats of Mail, that were extraordinary remarkable, cover’d with the Skins of such Creatures as resembled them in Stoutness and Valour. Anubis was cover’d with a Dog’s, and Macedon with the Skin of a Wolf; and for this reason these Beasts are religiously ador’d by the Egyptians. He had likewise for his Companion, Pan, whom the Egyptians have in great Veneration; for they not only set up Images and Statues up and down in every Temple, but built a City in Thebides after his Name, call’d by the Inhabitants Chemmin, which by interpretation is Pan’s City. There went along with them likewise those that were skilful in Husbandry, as Maro in the planting of Vines, and Triptolemus in sowing of Corn, and gathering in the Harvest.

All things being now prepar’d, Osiris having vow’d to the Gods to let his Hair grow till he return’d into Egypt, marcht away through Æthiopia; and for that very Reason it’s a piece of Religion, and practis’d among the Egyptians at this Day, that those that travel Abroad, suffer their Hair to grow, till they return Home. As he pass’d through Æthiopia, a Company of Satyrs were presented to him, who (as it’s reported) were all Hairy down to their Loyns: For Osiris was a Man given to Mirth and Jollity, and took great pleasure in Musick and Dancing; and therefore carry’d along with him a Train of Musicians, of whom Nine were Virgins, most Excellent Singers, and expert in many other things (whom the Greeks call Muses) of whom Apollo was the Captain; and thence call’d the Leader of the Muses: Upon this account the Satyrs, who are naturally inclin’d to skipping, dancing and singing, and all other sorts of Mirth, were taken in as part of the Army: For Osiris was not for War, nor came to fight Battels, and to decide Controversies by the Sword, every Country receiving him for his Merits and Virtues, as a God. In Ethiopia having instructed the Inhabitants in Husbandry, and Tillage of the Ground, and built several stately Cities among them, he left there behind him some to be Governors of the Country, and others to be Gatherers of his Tribute.

While they were thus imploy’d, ’tis said that the River Nile, about the Dogdays (at which time it uses to be the highest) broke down its Banks, and overflow’d the greatest part of Egypt, and that part especially where Prometheus govern’d, insomuch as almost all the Inhabitants were drown’d;[283] so that Prometheus was near unto Killing of himself for very grief of heart; and from the sudden and violent Eruption of the Waters, the River was call’d Eagle.

Hercules, who was always for high and difficult enterprizes, and ever of a stout Spirit, presently made up the Breaches, and turn’d the River into its Channel, and kept it within its ancient Banks; and therefore some of the Greek Poets from this fact have forg’d a Fable, That Hercules kill’d the Eagle that fed upon Prometheus his Heart. The most ancient Name of this river was Oceames, which in the Greek pronunciation is Oceanus; afterwards call’d Eagle, upon the violent Eruption. Lastly it was call’d Egyptus, from the Name of a King that there reign’d. The last Name which it still retains, it derives from Nileus, a King of those Parts.

Osiris being come to the Borders of Ethiopia, rais’d high Banks on either side of the River, lest in the time of its Inundation it should overflow the Country more than was convenient, and make it marish and boggy; and made Floodgates to let in the Water by degrees, as far as was necessary. Thence he pass’d through Arabia, bordering upon the Red Sea as far as to India, and the utmost Coasts that were inhabited: He built likewise many Cities in India, one of which he call’d Nysa, willing to have a remembrance of that in Egypt where he was brought up. At this Nysa in India, he planted Ivy, which grows and remains here only of all other Places in India, or the Parts adjacent. He left likewise many other Marks of his being in those Parts, by which the latter Inhabitants are induc’d to believe, and do affirm that this God was born in India.

He likewise addicted himself much to hunting of Elephants; and took care to have Statues of himself in every place, as lasting Monuments of his Expedition. Thence passing to the rest of Asia, he transported his Army through the Hellespont into Europe; and in Thrace he kill’d Lycurgus King of the Barbarians, who oppos’d him in his Designs. Then he order’d Maro (at that time an Old Man) to take care of the Planters in that Country, and to build a City, and call it Maroneo, after his own Name. Macedon his Son he made King of Macedonia, so calling it after him. To Triptolemus he appointed the Culture and Tillage of the Land in Attica. To conclude, Osiris having travell’d through the whole World, by finding out Food fit and convenient for Man’s Body, was a Benefactor to all Mankind. Where Vines would not grow and be fruitful, he taught the Inhabitants to make Drink of Barley, little inferiour in strength and pleasant Flavour to Wine it self. He brought back with him into Egypt the most pretious and richest things that ever place did afford; and for the many Benefits and Advantages that he was the Author of, by the common Consent of all Men, he gain’d the Reward of Immortality and Honour equal to the Heavenly Deities.

After his Death, Isis and Mercury celebrated his Funeral with Sacrifices and other Divine Honours, as to one of the Gods, and instituted many Sacred Rites mystical Ceremonies in Memory of the mighty Works wrought by this Hero, now Deify’d. Antiently the Egyptian Priests kept the manner of the Death of Osiris secret in their own Registers among themselves; but in after-times it fell out, that some that could not hold, blurted it out, and so it came Abroad. For they say that Osiris, while he govern’d in Egypt with all Justice imaginable, was Murder’d by his wicked Brother Typhon; and that he mangled his dead Body into Six and Twenty Pieces, and gave to each of his Confederates in the Treason a Piece, by that means to bring them all within the same horrid Guilt, and thereby the more to ingage them to advance him to the Throne, and to defend and preserve him in the Possession.

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But Isis, the Sister and Wife likewise of Osiris, with the assistance of her Son Orus, reveng’d his Death upon Typhon and his Complices, and possess’d her self of the Kingdom of Egypt. It’s said the Battel was fought near a River not far off a Town now call’d Antæa in Arabia, so call’d from Anteus, whom Hercules slew in the time of Osiris. She found all the Pieces of his Body, save his Privy Members; and having a desire to conceal her Husband’s Burial, yet to have him honour’d as a God by all the Egyptians, she thus contriv’d it. She clos’d all the Pieces together, cementing them with Wax and Aromatick Spices, and so brought it to the shape of a Man of the bigness of Osiris; then she sent for the Priests to her, one by one, and swore them all that they should not discover what she should then intrust them with. Then she told them privately that they only should have the Burial of the King’s Body; and recounting the many good Works he had done, charg’d them to bury the Body in a proper place among themselves, and to pay unto him all Divine Honour, as to a God. That they should Dedicate to him one of the Beasts bred among them, which of them they pleas’d, and that while it was alive, they should pay it the same Veneration as they did before to Osiris himself; and when it was dead, that they should Worship it with the same Adoration and Worship given to Osiris. But being willing to incourage the Priests to these Divine Offices by Profit and Advantage, she gave them the Third part of the Country for the Maintenance of the Service of the Gods and their Attendance at the Altars.

In memory, therefore, of Osiris’s good Deeds, being incited thereunto by the Commands of the Queen, and in expectation of their own Profit and Advantage, the Priests exactly perform’d every thing that Isis injoin’d them;[285] and therefore every Order of the Priests at this Day are of opinion that Osiris is bury’d among them. And they have those Beasts in great Veneration, that were so long since thus consecrated; and renew their Mournings for Osiris over the Graves of those Beasts. There are Two sacred Bulls especially, the one call’d Apis, and the other Mnevis, that are Consecrated to Osiris, and reputed as Gods generally by all the Egyptians. For this Creature of all others was extraordinarily serviceable to the first Inventers of Husbandry, both as to the sowing Corn, and other Advantages concerning Tillage, of which all reapt the Benefit. Lastly, they say, that after the Death of Osiris, Isis made a Vow never to Marry any other Man, and spent the rest of her Days in an exact Administration of Justice among her Subjects, excelling all other Princes in her Acts of Grace and Bounty towards her own People; and therefore after her Death, she was numbred among the Gods, and as such had Divine Honour and Veneration, and was buri’d at Memphis, where they shew her Sepulchre at this day in the Grove of Vulcan.

Yet there are some that deny that these Gods are Buri’d at Memphis; but near the Mountains of Ethiopia and Egypt, in the Isle of Nile, lying near to a place call’d Philas, and upon that account also nam’d the Holy Field. They confirm this by undoubted Signs and Marks left in this Island, as by a Sepulchre built and erected to Osiris, religiously Reverenc’d by all the Priests of Egypt, wherein are laid up Three Hundred and Threescore Bowls, which certain Priests, appointed for that purpose, fill every Day with Milk, and call upon the Gods by Name, with Mourning and Lamentation.

The several parts therefore of Osiris being found, they report were bury’d in this manner before related; but his Privy-members (they say) were thrown into the River by Typhon, because none of his Partners would receive them; and yet that they were divinely honour’d by Isis; for she commanded an Image of this very part to be set up in the Temples, and to be religiously ador’d; and in all their Ceremonies and Sacrifices to this God, she ordered that part to be held in divine Veneration and Honour. And therefore the Grecians, after they had learn’d the Rites of the Feasts of Bacchus, and the Orgian Solemnities from the Egyptians in all their Mysteries and Sacrifices to this God, they ador’d that Member by the Name of Phallus.

From Osiris and Isis, to the Reign of Alexander the Great, who built a City after his own Name, the Egyptian Priests reckon above Ten Thousand Years, or (as some write) little less than Three and Twenty Thousand Years. They affirm, that those that say this God Osiris was born at Thebes in Boetia of Jupiter and Semele, relate that which is false. For they say that Orpheus after he came into Egypt, was initiated into the Sacred Mysteries of Bacchus or Dionysus, and being a special Friend to the Thebans in Boetia, and of great esteem among them, to manifest his Gratitude, transferr’d the Birth of Bacchus or Osiris over into Greece.

And that the Common People, partly out of Ignorance, and partly out of a desire they had that this God should be a Grecian, readily receiv’d these Mysteries and Sacred Rites among them; and that Orpheus took the occasion following to fix the Birth of the God and his Rites and Ceremonies among the Greeks: As thus, Cadmus (they say) was born at Thebes in Egypt, and amongst other Children begat Semele: That she was got with Child by one unknown, and was deliver’d at Seven Months end of a Child very like to Osiris, as the Egyptians describe him. But such Births are not us’d to live, either because it is not the pleasure of the Gods it should be so, or that the Law of Nature will not admit it. The Matter coming to Cadmus[286] his Ear, being before warn’d by the Oracle to protect the Laws of his Country, he wrapt the Infant in Gold, and instituted Sacrifices to be offer’d to him, as if Osiris had appear’d again in this shape; and caus’d it to be spread abroad, that it was begotten of Jupiter, thereby both to honour Osiris, and to cover his Daughter’s Shame.

The Priests say that the Grecians have arrogated to themselves both their Gods and Demy-Gods (or Heroes), and say that divers Colonies were transported over to them out of Egypt: For Hercules was an Egyptian, and by his Valour made his way into most parts of the World, and set up a Pillar in Africa; and of this they endeavour to make proof from the Grecians themselves.c

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APPENDIX B. THE PROBLEM OF EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY

Notwithstanding the light thrown upon Egyptian history by the records from the monuments, the lists of the priest Manetho still form the basis of all computations of Egyptian chronology of the earlier periods. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, the records themselves, though in the aggregate wonderfully voluminous, yet, so far as deciphered, cover, after all, only scattered bits of the long periods of time involved. Mostly the individual records are the glorifications of the deeds of a single king. Some kings left scanty records, and often even these were wilfully destroyed by some subsequent ruler of another dynasty. Or, a king might leave the record of his predecessor, but substitute his own name for the rightful one in the chronicle. Even the great Ramses II was guilty of such an act as this. The fact of such tampering with the record would generally be perceptible, but it may not be so easy to determine whose was the rightful name which the falsifier erased.

Much more important than this, however, is the obstacle that arises from the fact that the Egyptians, like all other nations of antiquity, lacked a fixed era from which to reckon. They computed years with reasonable accuracy, but they never reckoned long periods consecutively from any single date. Hence the record of any particular king stands more or less by itself, or associated at most with recent predecessors. If the records of some of these predecessors have been lost, the gap may be of such a doubtful character as to throw uncertainty upon the chronology of long periods, or, indeed, of the entire remoter history. Thus it is that the records from the monuments, despite their great historic value and absorbing personal interest, do not in themselves, as yet, suffice to reveal in its entirety the history of the long succession of Egyptian dynasties. But fortunately these contemporary records have been found in many cases to accord marvellously with Manetho’s lists. Hence the faith in these lists as a whole has been greatly strengthened, and the historian of to-day, in basing his Egyptian chronology upon Manetho[288] for the periods not covered by known monuments, is by no means working altogether in the dark. It is true that there have been two schools of opinion as to how far this reliance should be carried: one school contending very warmly that Manetho’s lists are probably in places the records of contemporaneous dynasties,—it being known that the government was in many periods divided,—and hence that the entire period of time required for the dynasties as listed must be materially shortened; the other school maintaining that Manetho himself took note of such contemporaneous dynasties and eliminated them from his list, retaining only a single line of what he regarded as legitimate succession.

For the general student, it really does not matter greatly which of these views is correct. The general accuracy of Manetho is admitted on all hands, and the monuments sustain him to the extent of making sure a long list of dynasties, whether or not his exact number be admitted. When we recall that Manetho himself was, relatively speaking, a modern, living in the third century B.C., and hence writing about periods that were, even according to minimum estimates, farther separated from his age than he is from our own, it would not seem strange if he should have made some mistakes. But it is well enough also to remember that his lists would probably not have been challenged with so much fervour in our time, had it not been for certain ulterior bearings of this question of chronology. The clew will be evident to whoever notices that in the different estimates of Egyptian chronology the older historians—those of the earlier decades of the nineteenth century—are pretty generally the ardent advocates of a lower or more recent date for the beginning of the first dynasty.

In a word, during the period when the question of the antiquity of man was still matter of ardent controversy, even the most fair-minded historian could not help letting his prejudice on that subject influence his judgment regarding Egyptian chronology. The year 2349 B.C., which his Bible margin had taught him to recall as a date when the history of mankind began anew after an all-devastating flood, stood out in his mind as a danger mark that he must not let himself be carried past if he could possibly avoid it. If he preferred the Septuagint reckoning, he gained a few centuries more of leeway, say till 3250 B.C., but this was the ultimate limit, behind which no evidence could carry him.

Meantime historians who had not this bias were unequivocally fixing the beginning of the Egyptian dynasties a thousand years or so farther back. But their reckoning could count for nothing in the general verdict so long as the old estimate of man’s antiquity was held. No sooner, however, had it come to be generally conceded that the long-authoritative dates were incorrect, than a reaction set in among the Egyptologists. Once it was conceded that man had been an inhabitant of the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and that the years of his early civilisation must reach back into the tens of thousands, the form of the bias of the average searcher into ancient history was changed. That very human tendency which makes one like to excel his neighbour, caused the Egyptologists now to vie with their only competitors, the Assyriologists, in lengthening out their records, instead of shortening them. We do not mean that a bias was consciously admitted in one case or the other; but historians are human, and their judgments, like those of other mortals, are never altogether free from human prejudice.

The clear and simple fact seems to be, that no knowledge is at hand that enables the historian to fix with certainty the remoter dates of Egyptian history.[289] The very most that can be done, at present, is to determine minimum dates, as is done by the most recent German writers of authority, and to content ourselves with stating these, understanding that they make no pretence to absolute accuracy. When Professor Meyer, for example, says that the minimum date for the founding of the Old Memphis Kingdom by King Menes is 3180 B.C., he does not at all imply that Mariette is wrong in fixing the same event at 5004 B.C., or about two thousand years earlier. He simply means that in the present state of knowledge he does not feel justified in choosing a definite date; he is certain, however, that the true date cannot be placed later than 3180 B.C.

Some such latitude as this we must admit, then, in dealing with ancient Egyptian chronology. Of course the amount of possible variation progressively decreases as we come down the ages; but the chronology does not become absolutely fixed until we reach the comparatively recent period of King Psamthek I, who reigned from near the middle of the seventh century before our era.

Fortunately, however, these uncertainties of exact chronology need interfere but little with our interest and enjoyment in considering Egyptian history. Chronology is, indeed, as Professor Petrie has phrased it, “the backbone of history.” But this applies rather to the general sequence of events than to the exact citation of years; and fortunately there is no uncertainty at all about the sequence of important events in Egyptian history, even from the remotest times. We may not know the exact year in which the great Pyramid was built; but we do know exactly who built it, and the names and deeds of his predecessors and successors, as well as the general epoch in which the events took place. For the purpose of any one but the specialist, we could scarcely ask more than this. And a like certainty attaches to all other of the really great epochs of Egyptian history. The general student may feel quite content with the degree of precision of the attainable records; and, paying but slight attention to the less important dynasties, may well fix his attention upon those culminating periods when the great deeds were accomplished which render the history of Egypt memorable for all generations of men. The first of these periods, and the one which now claims our attention, was the epoch of the so-called Old Kingdom of Memphis—the epoch of the ushering in of Egyptian history, as known to succeeding generations; yet also the epoch of the building of the Pyramids—the most gigantic and permanent structures ever created by human minds and human hands.

Apart from questions of chronology, the sequence of chief events in Egyptian history is now fairly established and accepted by all schools of Egyptologists. This course of history proper we have followed under guidance of specialists who have devoted their lives to the elucidation of this subject. It may be well, however, to repeat a word of warning that has already been said as to the incompleteness of the records on which this narrative is based. It is one thing to assert that the main events of Egyptian history are known in proper sequence, and it is quite another to assume that a knowledge of all the events of that history is accessible. In point of fact, it must be freely admitted that our knowledge of Egyptian history as a whole is meagre indeed. Here and there a great event or a great name stands out prominently, but there are long stretches of time between, when not so much as the name of a single man is known in many generations.

Generally speaking, however, the periods marked by dearth of records may be presumed to be periods equally marked by dearth of great events;[290] and in one sense our history of these distant times assumes truer relation of perspective than can possibly be given to the chronicle of later periods which are replete with insignificant and bewildering details of minor events. Without scruple or regret, therefore, we may here and there condense the narrative of many generations of Egyptian history into a line or paragraph, while giving extended treatment to the deeds and accomplishments of a few great heroes who make Egyptian history illustrious.

But before turning to the history proper, it will be well to make a more detailed examination of the chronological foundations on which our knowledge rests. Eduard Meyer has outlined them succinctly.a From our sources of information, he says, it is evident that we can place ourselves on certain chronological ground for Egyptian history.

Manetho has rightly retained its general outline. He divides the kings, from the foundation of the kingdom by Menes until the fall of the last Darius, into thirty-one ruling houses, or dynasties. His division does not seem to be always correct; for instance, the Turin papyrus makes several more divisions out of the Ist Dynasty. Nevertheless, Manetho’s order has long been commonly accepted, and for many reasons its further retention commends itself.

The Turin papyrus just mentioned seems to have been written under Ramses III, as the name of this king appears in the accounts on the back. It contains a record of the Egyptian kings (the dynasties of the gods precede them), with a statement of the years of their reigns, and to some degree of their ages. Unfortunately the papyrus is much mutilated, and amidst numerous small fragments there exist only a few large pieces. But it is possible to obtain a general view of the papyrus by putting the most important fragments into their right places. It contains (if pages have not been torn off at the end) ten columns of from twenty-seven to twenty-eight lines, and it mentions about two hundred and twenty kings’ names, from Menes until before, or during, the Hyksos period.

These are divided into dynasties, which are sometimes specified only by a title, and sometimes by the word “reigned” being repeated after the king’s name. Under the longer lists totals are given. In the few cases where the figures of the papyrus have been verified by the help of the memorials, they have been found to be correct. However, the author is guilty of a great error in the total of the XIIth Dynasty.

The gaps in the papyrus are partially filled by the royal monumental tablets, which are altogether of a funereal character—a later king or citizen is shown offering sacrifice to the old rulers.

Three lists carry historical weight:

(1) The tablet of Seti I in Abydos, discovered in 1864 and quite complete, contains seventy-six names. The tablet of Ramses II, now in London, is a copy of this.

(2) The tablet of Tehutimes III from Karnak, now in the Louvre, very much injured and promiscuously put together, contains sixty-one names.

(3) The tablet from the tomb of Tunrei at Saqqarah (under Ramses II, discovered in 1860), contains fifty-one names, of which forty-seven remain.

Manetho’s list in its different editions comes next to these accounts. It was long thought that by putting it in its original form, we should arrive at a safe basis of Egyptian chronology. A more careful examination, however, shows us that Manetho is not to be trusted. Where we can verify his figures in the more ancient periods they are almost without exception[291] wrong, and this from no fault of the copyists and makers or extractors; there are constant confusion and gaps in the succession of names. Numerous examples of such errors may be seen in the comparison of Manetho’s list with the monuments. It is only about the XXth Dynasty that his figures seem to be reliable. Another circumstance must be added. According to Manetho’s arrangement, the dynasties follow each other, so that he includes a Theban and a contemporaneous Hyksos family in the XVIIth Dynasty, and does not reckon each one as a separate ruling house. In truth, such contemporaneous governments did repeatedly take place, and consequently they must reduce the dates of Manetho, even if the numbers be correct. King Menes would not, according to Manetho (under Unger’s calculation), be placed in the year 5613 B.C., but considerably later.

So we must give up the search for absolute dates as hopeless, and limit ourselves to an approximate computation of the periods of Egyptian history. The genealogies of the ruling houses, as well as those of private people, are of great service, for where we can trace a pedigree through long periods, we are able to give an approximate estimate of the number of generations. Thus we arrive at the “minimum” dates, with which we must content ourselves for the present.

For the long periods from the VIIth to the XIth Dynasties and from the XIVth to the XVIIth, which are almost completely destitute of monuments, the dates are extremely problematic. The dates therefore given for the XIIth Dynasty, for the Pyramid period and for Menes, only prove that they cannot well be put later, whilst they leave the way open for any one to put them farther back.b

The lists of Manetho, above referred to, are so important as to require fuller notice.

MANETHO’S TABLE OF THE EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES

Dynasty	Name of Dynasty	Capital	Province	Length of Years	Years before Hegira	Years before Christ
I	Thinis	Harabat-el-Madfuneh	Girgeh	253	5626	5004
II	Thinis	Harabat-el-Madfuneh	Girgeh	302	5373	4751
III	Memphis	Mitrahineh	Gizeh	214	5071	4449
IV	Memphis	Mitrahineh	Gizeh	284	4857	4235
V	Memphis	Mitrahineh	Gizeh	248	4573	3951
VI	Elephantine	Gezireh-Assuan	Esneh	203	4325	3703
VII	Memphis	Mitrahineh	Gizeh	70 days	4122	3500
VIII	Memphis	Mitrahineh	Gizeh	142	4122	3500
IX	Heracleopolis	Ahnas-el-Medineh	Beni Suef	109	3980	3358
X	Heracleopolis	Ahnas-el-Medineh	Beni Suef	185	3871	3249
XI	Thebes	Medinet Habu	Keneh }	213	3686	3064
XII	Thebes	Medinet Habu	Keneh }
XIII	Thebes	Medinet Habu	Keneh	453	3173	2851
XIV	Xoïs	Sakha	Menufieh	184	3020	2398
XV	Hyksos	San	Sharkieh }	511	2836	2214
XVI	Hyksos	San	Sharkieh }
XVII	Hyksos	San	Sharkieh }
XVIII	Thebes	Medinet Habu	Keneh	241	2325	1703
XIX	Thebes	Medinet Habu	Keneh	174	2084	1462
XX	Thebes	Medinet Habu	Keneh	178	1910	1288
[292]XXI	Tanis	San	Sharkieh	130	1732	1110
XXII	Bubastis	Tel-Basta	Sharkieh	170	1602	980
XXIII	Tanis	San	Sharkieh	89	1432	810
XXIV	Saïs	Sa-el-Hagar	Gharbieh	6	1343	721
XXV	Ethiopian	Sa-el-Hagar	Gharbieh	50	1337	715
XXVI	Saïs	Sa-el-Hagar	Gharbieh	138	1287	665
XXVII	Persian	Sa-el-Hagar	Gharbieh	121	1149	527
XXVIII	Saïs	Sa-el-Hagar	Gharbieh	7	1028	406
XXIX	Mendes	Ashmun-el-Ruman	Dakalieh	21	1021	399
XXX	Sebennytes	Samanudi	Gharbieh	38	1000	378
XXXI	Persian	Samanudi	Gharbieh	8	962	340
End of list according to Manetho
XXXII	Macedonian			27	954	332
XXXIII	Greek			275	927	305
XXXIV	Roman			411	652	30
		Edict of Theodosius			241	A.D. 381

No one can help being struck by the enormous total to which Manetho’s summing up of the dynasties brings us. By means of the Egyptian priest’s lists we are in truth carried back to the times that for all other peoples are purely mythical, but for Egypt are certainly historic.

Embarrassed by this fact and finding no other means of discrediting Manetho’s authenticity and veracity, some modern writers have supposed that Egypt has been at various periods of its history divided into several kingdoms, and that Manetho gives us as successive some royal families whose reigns were in fact simultaneous.

According to these authorities the Vth Dynasty, for example, would have reigned at Memphis at the same time that the VIth governed at Elephantine. It is not necessary to demonstrate the advantages of such an arrangement. By bringing certain dates closer together and by correcting others it is possible by an ingenious and clever arrangement of the dynasties to shorten almost at will the space of time covered by Manetho’s lists; thus while, in the table, we have the date 5626 A.H., that is, before the Hegira, [5004 B.C.] as that of the foundation of the Egyptian monarchy, other writers like Bunsen do not go farther back than 4245 A.H. or 3623 B.C.

On whose side does the truth lie? The more one studies the question, the more it is seen how difficult it is to reply. The greatest of all obstacles to the establishment of a definite Egyptian chronology is that the Egyptians never had a chronology proper. The employment of an era, properly so called, was unknown to them, and up to the present time it has never been proved that they reckoned otherwise than by the years of the reign. And moreover these years were far from having a fixed point of beginning, since sometimes they began at the commencement of the year in which the preceding king died, and sometimes with the coronation of the new king. Whatever may be the apparent precision of its calculations, modern science will always be baffled in its attempts to establish that which the Egyptians themselves did not possess.c

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[293]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter]

Chapter I. The Egyptian Race and Its Origin

b Eduard Meyer, Geschichte der Alten Aegyptens.

d W.M. Flinders Petrie, from the article “Egyptology” in the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

g Adolf Erman, Aegypten und Aegyptisches Leben im Alterthum.

Chapter II. The Old Memphis Kingdom

b Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

d A. Wiedemann, Aegyptische Geschichte.

e Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

f G.C.C. Maspero, The Dawn of Civilisation (translated from the French by M. L. McClure).

g Samuel Birch, translation of the Inscription of Una in Records of the Past.

h H.C. Brugsch, Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen.

Chapter III. The Old Theban Kingdom

b H. C. Brugsch, Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen.

c G.C.C. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient.

d Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

e William Beloe, Translator of the History of Herodotus.

f K.R. Lepsius, Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai (translated from the German by Leonora and Joanna B. Horner).

g Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

h W.N. Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt.

i Flavius Josephus, The Works of Josephus (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

j Manetho, cited by Josephus.

Chapter IV. The Restoration

b Samuel Birch, Records of the Past.

c G.C.C. Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations (translated from the French by M.L. McClure).

d G.C.C. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient.

Chapter V. The Nineteenth Dynasty

b G.C.C. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient.

c Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

d H.C. Brugsch, Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen.

Chapter VI. The Finding of the Royal Mummies

b G.C.C. Maspero, La Trouvaille de Deir-el-Bahari.

Chapter VII. The Period of Decay

b G.C.C. Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations (translated from the French by M.L. McClure).

c G.C.C. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient.

d Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

Chapter VIII. The Closing Scenes

b L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

c Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

d Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

[294]

Chapter IX. Manners and Customs of the Egyptians

b J. Gardner Wilkinson, A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians.

c J. F. C. Champollion, Descriptions de l’Égypte; l’Égypte sous les Pharaohs; etc.

d P. Le Page Renouf, in Birch’s Records of the Past.

e Amelia B. Edwards, A Thousand Miles Up the Nile.

f François Chabas, in Birch’s Records of the Past.

g E. A. T. W. Budge, The Book of the Dead.

h K. R. Lepsius, Denkmäler.

i Samuel Birch, Records of the Past.

j Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

k Georg Ebers, An Egyptian Princess; A History of Egypt; etc.

m G. C. C. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient.

n Auguste Mariette, Aperçu de l’histoire d’Égypte.

o W. N. Flinders Petrie, Numerous Works; see Bibliography, p. 302.

Chapter X. The Egyptian Religion

b Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

c Adolf Erman, Aegypten und Aegyptisches Leben im Alterthum.

d Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

e J. Gardner Wilkinson, A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians.

f Strabo, The Geography of Strabo (translated from the Greek by J. Falconer and H. C. Hamilton).

Chapter XI. Egyptian Culture

b J. Gardner Wilkinson, A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians.

c G. C. C. Maspero, rendering in Les Contes Populaires de l’Égypte Ancienne of M. Golenischeff’s translation of the original papyrus in the Imperial Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

d Henry Smith Williams, The History of the Art of Writing.

e Claudius Ælianus, The Variable History of Ælianus (translated from the Greek by A. Fleming).

Appendix A. Classical Traditions

b Herodotus, History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

c Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

Appendix B. The Problem of Egyptian Chronology

b Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

c A. Mariette, Aperçu de l’histoire d’Égypte.

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[295]

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY, WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

In the preparation of the present work the editors have had occasion to consult a very large number of books, in addition to those actually quoted. Not all of these are here listed; neither is any effort made to have the present bibliography complete in other respects. Many names of recent works that might easily be added are purposely omitted because of the facility with which the student will come upon them. On the other hand, a good many works are included because their very obscurity would lead to their being overlooked. Some of these had great importance in their day, and must be looked to by any one who would appreciate the history of development and research in this field. Others had at best only incidental importance, yet should not be quite forgotten. Brief critical estimates are in many cases added to orientate the would-be investigator; and in the case of the more important authorities, biographical notes are also appended.

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[305]

PART III

THE HISTORY OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

E. BABELON, E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, F. DELITZSCH, JOSEPH HALÉVY, A. H. L.
HEEREN, H. V. HILPRECHT, F. HOMMEL, L. W. KING, A. H. LAYARD,
F. LENORMANT, G. C. C. MASPERO, JOACHIM MENANT, EDUARD
MEYER, J. OPPERT, J. P. PETERS, HUGO RADAU, HENRY
RAWLINSON, R. W. ROGERS, A. H. SAYCE, E. SCHRADER,
C. P. TIELE, H. WINCKLER, A. WIEDEMANN

TOGETHER WITH AN ESSAY ON

THE RELATIONS OF BABYLONIA WITH OTHER SEMITIC COUNTRIES

BY

JOSEPH HALÉVY

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

CLAUDIUS ÆLIANUS, C. J. BALL, G. B. BARTON, G. BERTIN, THE HOLY
BIBLE, P. E. BOTTA, D. G. BRINTON, EUGÈNE BURNOUF, ISAAC PRESTON
CORY, MICHAEL J. DE GOEJE, DIODORUS SICULUS, ADOLF ERMAN, E.
FLANDRIN, G. K. C. GERLAND, G. S. GOODSPEED, G. F. GROTEFEND,
I. GUIDI, H. GUNKEL, HERODOTUS, EDWARD HINCKS, MORRIS
JASTROW, P. JENSEN, ALFRED JEREMIAS, C. H. W. JOHNS,
C. JOHNSTON, FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, A. H. KEANE,
A. VON KREMER, CHRISTIAN LASSEN,
J. F. McCURDY, M. MONTGOMERY, J. P. MAHAFFY, J. DE MORGAN, G. NAGEL,
THEODOR NÖLDEKE, W. G. PALGRAVE, W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, T. G.
PINCHES, PLINY MAJOR, QUINTUS CURTIUS, H. RASSAM, GEO.
RAWLINSON, KARL RITTER, G. C. E. DE SARZEC, V. SCHEIL,
NATHAN SCHMIDT, GEORGE SMITH, C. JULIUS SOLINUS,
ALOYS SPRENGER, B. STADE, STRABO, W. H. FOX TALBOT,
G. WEBER, J. GARDNER WILKINSON, HENRY
SMITH WILLIAMS, W. WRIGHT

[306]

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

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[307]

MESOPOTAMIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

	Page
Introductory Essay. The Relations of Babylonia with other Semitic Countries. By Joseph Halévy	309
Mesopotamian History in Outline	318
Chapter I. Land and People	337
Chapter II. Old Babylonian History	349
Chapter III. The Rise of Assyria	366
Chapter IV. Four Generations of Assyrian Greatness	397
Chapter V.The Decline and Fall of Assyria	438
Chapter VI. Renascence and Fall of Babylon	446
Chapter VII. Manners and Customs of Assyria and Babylonia	460
Chapter VIII. The Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians	515
Chapter IX. Babylonian and Assyrian Culture	534
Appendix A. Classical Traditions	571
Appendix B. Excavations in Mesopotamia, and Their Results	600
Brief Reference-list of Authorities by Chapters	627
A General Bibliography of Mesopotamian History	629

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[308]
[309]

THE RELATIONS OF BABYLONIA WITH OTHER SEMITIC COUNTRIES

Written Specially for the Present Work

By JOSEPH HALÉVY

Professor in the Collège de France, Paris

Ingratitude in masses, as in individuals, is very apt to be the reward of great benefactors. Egypt, taciturn, proud, and self-contained, was respected and admired by all her neighbours, while Greece and Judea, the shining beacons of Mediterranean civilisation, from the point of view of morals and science, have had the mortification of receiving ineffaceable stigmas. In the popular language of our own day, “Greek” and “Jew” are such offensive sobriquets that the descendants of these two glorious races seek to avoid the use of those names when describing their origins.

Babylonia, after her conquest and disappearance from the scene of the world, although she was vastly superior to her destroyers, did not escape this little-deserved fate. To the contemporaries of her fall, Babylon is only the city of courtesans and insipid magic; nevertheless, in the days of her strength, she ruled the barbarian world that surrounded her by other means than naked flesh and empty formulas of incantation. For thousands of years she shone with an unparalleled brilliancy, and illuminated with her vivifying rays the rude peoples with which she was in contact. Her influence left indelible traces even on the civilisations of western Asia and of the Greek world, partly through the agency of the Phœnicians and Aramæans. And if her disappearance caused no disturbance in the march of progress, it is because her mission was fulfilled long before the epoch of her decline. From the reign of Xerxes, plundered Babylon gradually decayed; on the arrival of Alexander she was already three-fourths in ruins. The war of the Diadochi and the advent of the Parthian dynasty completed her entombment. There was none to assume her moral heritage at that time, for the heir had already taken all that was precious and truly imperishable.

A truly intellectual culture is manifested in the possession of a form of writing. The existence of it in Babylon is proved by documents that go back to the fifth millennium B.C. The letters consist as yet of linear strokes representing certain parts of the human body, various kinds of animals, plants, and natural or manufactured objects. It was not until later that these strokes assumed the wedge form that has caused the name “cuneiform” system to be applied to them. The primitive characters are few in number—about fifteen—and are joined with one another to form a syllabary that is both ideographic and phonetic.

[310]

The intrinsic nature of these values is a striking proof of the Semitic origin of the system, and completely refutes the hypothesis of the earlier decipherers that there existed on Babylonian soil prior to the Semites an alien race called “Sumerian” or “Accadian,” from whom came the cuneiform characters, as well as the entire Semitic civilisation of Babylonia. Such syllables as ab, “father”; an, “god”; el, “pure, bright”; en, “lord”; sal, “servant, woman”; il, “high”; is, “tree, wood”; ul, “past”; mu, “name”; rat, “canal”; sag, “summit, head”; rig, “plant, green leaf,” etc., are taken from fundamental Semitic words of the Babylonian language, which, except for slight variations, was also that of Elam and Assyria. Nowhere, and at no period of their existence, is any linguistic modification noticed which could be attributed to the intrusion of a foreign element.

Without risk of being accused of exaggeration, we may place the beginning of writing in the sixth, or even in the seventh, millennium before our era; and yet the Babylonian language has the worn and phonetically impoverished character which it always preserved in comparison with its sister languages. This is an astonishing phenomenon, and gives an idea of the extreme antiquity, not only of the existence of the Semites in Babylonia, but of the development of the great civilisation of which they were the creators.

For, after the appearance of the written documents on stone and on clay tablets, we meet with a most remarkable ancient civilisation: monarchical institutions, communal organisations, flourishing agriculture, systematic canalisation, metal working, proprietorship of land, extensive commercial transactions, fixed taxes, the establishment of governors in subject countries. With regard to science, astronomy was cultivated and there were observatories for the study of the movements of the stars and the eclipses. The Babylonians had the divisions of the year, the month, and the day; they fixed weights and measures, and calculated square and cube roots. A rational classification facilitated the knowledge of botany and zoology. Dynastic lists were drawn up with care, in which the principal historical events of the reigns were recorded. Finally, the spiritual needs of the nation were satisfied by a vast mythological system which is lost in the night of time, and on the basis of which innumerable epic tales were developed. Among these the stories of the creation and of the deluge, the descent of Ishtar into Hades, the adventures of Gilgames and Etanna, etc., rank among the most beautiful products of the poetic imagination. On the other hand, the fetichistic mysticism of prehistoric times was transformed into a learned magic, which was combined with religious and moral elements, and claimed to be based upon miraculous facts that had, however, been proved by experience.

A Babylonian furnished with these elements of intellectual culture must, in spite of his superstitions and the real gaps in his knowledge, have seemed a superior being to the neighbouring tribes which had the same racial instincts, but whose development was still embryonic and had taken place under totally different conditions. It is nothing astonishing, then, that the most capable of these semi-savages hastened to adopt, in different degrees, a large part of the Babylonian civilisation, the advantages of which they had learned to appreciate. As usual, it is the apparent and material side that was accepted first; after a more intimate acquaintance with the Babylonian mode of life, these peoples were captivated by the religious conceptions and the powerful attraction of the legends and the magic. All this slowly filtered into the mind of the other Semitic peoples, and became so well embodied there that some centuries later it formed an integral part of their national substance, and to such a degree that it has been possible to[311] disentangle their true origin only by means of an arduous research which has not yet said the last word.

The extension of Babylonian civilisation beyond its primitive cradle had its greatest strength during the glorious reign of Sargon I, the first monarch known to have made military expeditions into the countries of the west. We shall have, then, to consider, first, the pre-Sargonic, second, the post-Sargonic, epochs.

Before the reign of Sargon, about thirty-eight hundred years before our common era, Babylonia had succeeded in forming itself into a national body, having the same manners, speaking the same language, and using the same alphabet. No alien people broke into this unity of race and genius, which included on its eastern side the inhabitants of the Elamitic plain, forming a simple annex to Babylonia on that side of the Tigris. The great excess of population flowed into the fertile plains extending between the Tigris and the mighty chain of the Zagros, and founded the little kingdoms of Suti, Lulubi, Namar, and with greater success the powerful kingdom of Assyria, which during the years of its prosperity became the most powerful military state of the oriental world.

These very ancient colonies were often in conflict with the mother country, and Assyria even succeeded in imposing its iron yoke for several generations; but, save for Sennacherib’s moment of violent passion, Babylonia remained for all of them a centre of light and of religious mystery. The Babylonian divinities have their temples and serve as types for various localisations. In Assyria, especially, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Kidmur, etc., are worshipped. The Babylonian origin is perpetuated in the new capital Ninua (Nineveh), which is the name of a locality of Babylonia, while the ancient capital Asshur recalls the name of the most ancient god of the Babylonian epic of creation.

It goes without saying that among the neighbouring tribes of different languages Babylonian influence could not penetrate so completely. In the south the numerous Aramæan tribes persisted in their nomadic state; in the mountainous districts of the east the Susio-Amardians, in the north the Vannians and the Mitannians, while accepting Babylonian civilisation, use along with the ordinary Babylonian syllabary a more limited one for writing their own languages. Traces of Assyrian influences in ancient epochs have been proved in Cappadocia, which shows the great antiquity of the kingdom of Assyria. But the most important and most enduring influence manifests itself in the Semitic region of the extreme west, in Syrio-Phœnicia and in Palestine.

Through the discovery of the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, which date from the reigns of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV, it was learned with astonishment that in the fourteenth century before our era, Babylonian was the diplomatic language, not only of the western Semites, but also of the sovereigns of Egypt. Syria and Phœnicia then formed a vassal province of the Pharaohs, probably as a result of the conquests of Tehutimes III; the use of Egyptian writing, or at least of the special Assyrian type, was to be expected there, but it is the Babylonian alphabet, the Babylonian dialect, that we find in use. We are forced to conclude that the extension of Babylonian culture was due to an occupation of Syria by the Babylonians at an extremely early period, when Assyria was still too feeble to bar the way to the country of its origin. History shows the truth of this, for it tells us that Sargon I spent three years in Syria, and finally made himself master of it; in one of his maritime expeditions he even crossed to the island of[312] Cyprus and took possession. It is probable that this vassalage of Syria to Babylonia underwent frequent reactions and interruptions of continuity, due in great part to the policy of Egypt, which was seeking an outlet to the north. The plan of thwarting the covetousness of the Pharaohs for this province, if not of simply annexing the valley of the Nile to the great empire of the East, was carried out by Sargon I in an invasion of Egypt, the success of which is recorded in the account of the haruspices [Tablet of Omens]. His son Naram-Sin, according to the same documents, likewise invaded Egypt and killed its king, whose name has unfortunately disappeared on account of the breaking of the tablet. Egypt, intimidated, made no hostile movement for several centuries, which undoubtedly strengthened the Babylonian authority in Syria under all the dynasties that successively occupied the throne in the capital of Chaldea.

In the age of Abraham, when Elam exercised supremacy over Babylonia, the king of the latter country, Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis, figures among the kings who had accompanied the Elamite suzerain in his expedition against several tribes of eastern and southern Palestine (Gen. xiv.). Seven centuries later the Egyptian functionaries of Syrio-Phœnicia correspond in Babylonian with the court of Thebes. This province had been conquered a half-century before by Tehutimes III; and the Egyptian supremacy left its trace in the invention of the Phœnician alphabet, which marks the decision to break with Babylonian sympathies in favour of the intellectual culture of Egypt, of which the city of Byblus was to be the principal centre.

A remarkable circumstance furnished the occasion for this decision. In this city, where mystic tendencies seem to have prevailed over the desire for the riches that navigation and commerce bring, a local goddess was worshipped, called Baal-Gebal, “Lady of Byblus,” who represented one of the numerous Semitic goddesses known under the name of Baalat or Belit. She was identified with the great Egyptian goddess Isis, and the myth of Osiris was attached to the shore of this city to such an extent that the priesthood of Byblus was believed to be in possession of the true meaning of these mysteries. At the bottom of this process was the desire of finding a ground of agreement for all the religious conceptions of the civilised nations of the age. In the matter of religion, as in the arts and industry, the rôle of the Phœnicians consisted in serving as intermediaries, as zealous apostles who saw the advantage of being useful to the barbarians after having obtained profit from them, and hoped to profit further in the future.

So, after this reconcilement with the Egyptian religion, the exportation of manufactured articles to the valley of the Nile, or of imitations of Egyptian art, which was so strongly marked with a religious stamp, could develop indefinitely in all the Mediterranean regions and contribute to the prosperity of the mother country and her colonies. So, after the fourteenth century before the common era, the invention of alphabetic writing had barred the way for the extension of Babylonian writing into the European world. The ancient spiritual legacy of Babylonia’s thousand years of domination, a natural product of the Semitic genius, was too strongly anchored in Syrio-Phœnicia to be totally eclipsed, or even to descend to an inferior rank under the pressure of Egyptian influence.

Egypt, with its language deprived of all outlet and with its essentially funereal mythology, was incapable of producing a movement of renaissance in foreign peoples. The spiritual condition remained without notable change, but, direct contact with Babylonia having become more difficult, the Phœnicians were obliged to record in their own language their ancestral and[313] divine traditions, in which the universal elements received from Babylonia always remained preponderant.

Of Phœnician literature nothing is known in the original language, but some cosmogonic data taken from the book of Sanchoniathon by Philo of Byblus reflect myths that can have been produced only on the soil of Babylon, although the Philhellenic author is unable to interpret them with exactness. The primordial couple of chaos, Apason and Tomoth, are in reality the Babylonian divinities prior to the creation: Apsu, “ocean, abyss,” and Tiamat, “sea”; but Philo, carried away by Neoplatonic doctrine and confounding similar consonants, attributes to Apason the meaning of “desire,” and seems to discern in Tiamat the divinity Mot, “death,” symbolical of matter. Another goddess, Chosartes, recalls the consort of Asshur, Kishar, of cosmogonic character. On the Syrio-Phœnician monuments we often read the name of the goddess Anath, bearing the title of “force of life or of the living,” but the masculine consort is not met with. The Babylonian inscriptions fill the gap by very frequently furnishing the couple Anu and Anata. Philistia worshipped principally the ichthyomorphous god Dagon, who is no other than the Babylonian Daganu, associated with Anu.

Among other divine personages we note in the first place Tammuz, consort of Astarte, who was slain by a boar in the flower of his youth. His death was mourned for a month each year, and his resurrection was later celebrated with frenzied demonstrations of joy. This myth of nature, symbolical of the passing of summer and metaphorically of that of ardent and passionate youth, has as its basis the Babylonian tale of Du’uzu, eponym of the month of that name (Tammuz), who died prematurely, and whom the goddess Ishtar (Astarte), the incarnation of ardent passion, endeavours, though in vain, to bring back from the kingdom of death. The grief and the heroic effort of the goddess are told in a touching manner in the beautiful poem, entitled The Descent of Ishtar into Hades. The Phœnicians mourned Tammuz under the honorary title of Adon, Adonim, “lord,” whence the Greek Adonis. From Phœnicia this rite passed to Greece, and was celebrated there with no less pomp, while the descent of Ishtar became there the point of departure for several analogous legends.

Less known is the cult of the Babylonian god of war, Nergal, who had sanctuaries in Phœnicia. Among celestial gods we identify Hadad or Hadod, styled “king of the gods,” Rimmon, Nabu, Sin, and Mar, called among the Babylonians Adad, Ramman (god of the air), Nabu, Sin, Allat, and Marduk (god of Babylon). The inscriptions of Sam’al add to these Nusk and Be’el-Kharran, one of whom is the Babylonian Nusku, the other a local Bel of the Babylonian city of Kharran, whose cult was transplanted to the city of the same name in Upper Mesopotamia.

Since very remote antiquity certain names of Babylonian divinities have been fixed in Syrio-Phœnicia as names of places and persons: the city of Nebo in Moab, the desert of Sin, and probably also Mount Sinai in Arabia Petræa, the fortress of Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin; Ana, a chief of Esau, Anath, a judge of Israel, Hadad, the common name of a king of Aram and a king of Idumæa. So many reminiscences of the superior rank of the Babylonian religion clearly prove how the mind of the western Semites was imbued and moulded into permanent form by their ancient masters in the ages preceding the occupation of Syria by the Egyptians. Egypt did almost nothing to modify the tendencies of the subject peoples; she contented herself with collecting the taxes, and gave nothing in exchange. We must not then be surprised that, if we except the maritime coast, Egyptian[314] dominion left no trace on the civilisation of the interior of Syria. These peoples, when they became independent, continued to cultivate the germs of civilisation they had received in such abundance, but regarded them as their own creations.

Passing to the nomads of northern Arabia we find ourselves before an ethnographic unknown, the ancient tribes having disintegrated and new ones formed, a transformation that was certainly repeated several times. There is as yet no agreement on the question whether the tribes called in ancient times Ishmaelites and Ceturians spoke Arabic or Aramæan. It is, however, certain that fragments of southern tribes of true Arabian race moved to the north at periods very difficult to determine. It is not very long since it was affirmed that these unstable populations lacked every element of civilisation, and it was even claimed that they were a pure example of unmixed Semitic race, to which an instinctive monotheism was attributed.

These speculations have been dissipated by the testimony of the Assyrian texts, which show that the Arabs possessed statues of their gods. These proud children of the desert even signed their submission to the government of Nineveh, in order to recover the statues which the Assyrians had taken from them in the course of an expedition into the interior of Arabia. The possession of statues implies the existence in the oases of fixed sanctuaries, of religious rites, and of a traditional priesthood.

When we consider that the conquering nation of the Persians did not arrive at the idea of anthropomorphic gods until the time of Artaxerxes II, and then solely under the influence of the Babylonian cult, we cannot doubt that the worship of statues by the nomadic Arabs in the seventh century before our era was due to the same influence. The Ishmaelites were particularly devoted to Atar Celeste, that is, to the great goddess Ishtar, whose cult spread from Babylon among all the Semites of Syria.

In the oasis of Teyma a stele has been found that fixes the revenues of a priest, who had lately been installed, to provide for the expenses of the cult of an adopted divinity, and this priest is dressed in the mode of the Babylonian priesthood. Such a borrowing is all the more remarkable because the garments of sacrificing priests had in antiquity a meaning intimately connected with the religious mysteries. This fact supposes the presence of Babylonian instructors at some previous epoch.

Hedjaz forms the first province, whose inhabitants belong to the Arabian race, properly so called, whose idiom and whose writing are very different from those of the Aramæan populations of the north. Some of these tribes settled in the east of Syria, on the edge of the desert, especially in the oasis of Safa, south of Damascus. We must wait until the numerous graffiti, discovered in recent times, are published, before we can get an exact idea of the theophorous names used among these tribes. The names Bel and Hadad figure here, however; but this may be a late borrowing from their Aramæan neighbours. From northern Hedjaz we have a considerable number of inscriptions and graffiti, copies of which are still to be regarded with caution, and there, too, the names Bel, Hadad and compounds of the Babylonian Nabu, are found in the list of names of the nomads.

More interesting is the ancient name of Mecca, Macoraba, which originally designated the celebrated central sanctuary of the region. This name is derived front the verb karaba, which in Babylonian means “worship, bless, pray”, in evident proof of an ancient borrowing from the idiom of the cuneiform texts. We shall know some day what the inscriptions of middle and southern Hedjaz contain in the way of theophorous names. These inscriptions[315] certainly exist, and await a traveller courageous enough to save them from total destruction at the stupid hands of the pilgrims. The famous black stone of Kaaba seems to bear an inscription of which it would be well to have a photograph.

We know still less what is reserved for us in the graffiti scattered in the intermediate region between Hedjaz and Yemen; the graphic chain cannot have been interrupted in this latitude, which from great antiquity formed the entrance to the highly civilised kingdom of Sheba, and which, owing to its production of aromatic essences, had commercial relations with the peoples of the Mediterranean.

Yemen was composed of four kingdoms, of which that of Sheba seems to have been the most ancient and most powerful; the other three are Catabania, Hadramaut, Mahrah or Tafat. Of the latter we have no indigenous information prior to Islamism, and there is reason to believe that it formed a vassal state of Hadramaut. The latter is pre-eminently the spice-producing region, and Catabania may be considered as an ancient colony of Hadramaut, which was founded on the northern route for a commercial purpose, and later gained its independence.

In its turn Catabania founded, again, on the northern route, another colony, which, on gaining its freedom, called itself the Minyæan people, after the principal city, Ma’in. The Minyæi left traces of their activity at Egra on the frontier of Nabatia, and in central Egypt at Oxyrhyncus, where they had a settlement at the time of the first Ptolemies; but their presence in Egypt in the Persian period is proved by a votive inscription, thanking their gods for having saved their caravan from the danger by which it had been threatened during the war between the Egyptians and the Medes, i.e., the Persians. From Egypt they sent their caravans to Gaza in Phœnicia and into all Syria.

Prior to this the trade in incense and spices seems to have been in the hands of the Sabæans. Solomon (about the year 1000 B.C.) sought to make a treaty with this people, whose queen had made him an official visit at Jerusalem. It is to be presumed that the Sabæans also sent caravans directly to Nineveh and Babylon by way of the oases of Negran, Wady Dawassir, and Gebel-Sammar. Owing to these almost uninterrupted visits, the peoples of southern Arabia were in a position to learn and practise customs and rites peculiar to the eastern Semites; for example, the employment of aromatic fumigation as a means of purification after sexual intercourse. The Sabæan pantheon contained El (the Assyrio-Babylonian Ilu) under the guise of a divine personage, and not simply as an abstract term for “god.” The Babylonian Ishtar, daughter of Sin, is transformed into a male divinity, Athtar, son of Sin. The manifold diversification of the Babylonian goddess appears also in the Sabæan Athtar; the great religious centres of Sheba each possess their own Athtar. Nabu, the Babylonian god of writing and prophecy, was also worshipped by the Catabanians under the somewhat disguised form of Anbai. From the point of view of art, the technique of sculpture and decoration often recalls the Babylonian style. Finally, we meet in the kingdom of Sheba the Assyrian institution of the limmi, or annual archons, an institution that existed also at Carthage, but nowhere else on the Asiatic continent, least of all in a monarchical state.

We know very little of the religion of the Agazi or Semites of Abyssinia; a pre-Christian inscription asserts, however, that the cult of El and of Astar (Astarte) flourished among them. Their pantheon included also[316] a god of war called Mahram, the equivalent of the Ninib or Adar of the Semites of the north.

On the opposite side, at the extreme east of the Arabian peninsula, along the Persian gulf, the most important agglomeration formed the kingdom of Gerrha. The Gerrhæans maintained commercial relations with both Egypt and Chaldea. One of their cities bore the name of Bilbana, “Bil (Bel) has built,” a certain indication that it had adopted the cult of the most popular Babylonian god. Facing this coast is the Bahrein group of islands, the largest of which contains a number of tombs in which cuneiform inscriptions in the Babylonian language have been found.

We have now made the round of the whole Semitic region, and everywhere we have been able to show striking Babylonian influences in spite of the enormous distance in time and space that separates the converging rays from their point of radiation. But before concluding, we must halt upon a particular territory, a territory that forms but an imperceptible point in this vast region, but which in spite of its material diminutiveness brought forth a nation that was destined to assume the glorious rôle of being the legitimate heir of the great Babylonian ancestor, and of directing the conscience not only of the Semitic race, but of the most civilised portion of the human race in general.

This nation, which chance seems to have thrown into the world without defence, in the midst of hostile elements that were furious for its destruction, and whose name, Israel, exactly symbolises the unremitting struggle against the terribly destructive powers that surround it, this nation, I say, had the strength to transform the splendid polytheistic heritage that had fallen to it from Babylon into a monotheistic theory of an astounding originality. The transformation of the antique legacy took place only after centuries of struggle between the best part of the nation, the party of the prophets, and the conservatism of the mass of the people, who were everywhere attached to the ancient traditions.

The writings of this monotheistic minority, which finally imposed itself upon the entire nation, enable us to appreciate the importance of the ancient elements, the dross of which was rejected in the refining process of the prophets. Genesis has preserved two great and very characteristic Babylonian epics,—the Creation, and the Deluge,—but how different in spirit, in spite of the close similarity in outline and external form.

In the Babylonian cosmogony, chaos, incarnate in the female dragon Tiamat, the primordial ocean, brings forth at the same time the gods and the most horrible, malevolent monsters. Having learned that the gods wish to build themselves a more commodious residence in her domain, she gathers her forces, furiously attacks the clan of gods, and puts them to flight. They unite again and choose as their champion Marduk, the son of Yan, who succeeds in vanquishing the terrible ancestress. Marduk cuts the body of Tiamat into two pieces, and of them he constructs heaven and earth. Then he proceeds to make the heavenly bodies, and arranges them in an immutable order; he stocks the earth with plants and animals, and has man made by the goddess Arura, who fashions him out of the dust of the earth.

This myth, splendid as an epic invention, is too rude to contain the least philosophical principle. The Hebrew thinker, while retaining the general outline, has eliminated the whole crowd of monstrous or ugly divinities unworthy to receive the homage of the human race. The picture has lost nothing in extent; but a single, all-powerful god first creates chaotic matter, and then organises it, step by step, for the sole benefit of the human race.[317] The cycle of the ten antediluvian patriarchs, which includes millions of years, is reduced to sixteen hundred years, and thus brought within the range of actual humanity. Finally, the deluge, in the primitive legend the result of the mad arrogance of the god Bel, is justified by the extraordinary corruption of the men of that epoch.

Like a true reformer the prophetic narrator has raised upon the Babylonian basis a new system whose rational and moral side need not fear comparison with any other religious doctrine of humanity. Among the Greeks, no religious or social reform could be developed and preserved that took for a basis their castes of irresponsible gods. Egypt perished without having attempted to rise from its coarse animal-worship. Babylonianism alone, by its hymns and its epics, still lives to-day as an important factor in universal religion, although under a form idealised by genius. Materially, Babylon is but a memory, but a delicate part of its atoms passed into the vigorous constitution of its spiritual heir, the sacred book of Hebrew monotheism, to become the common property of humanity.

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[318]

MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY AND OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

The Babylonians and Assyrians were two very important peoples of remote antiquity, inhabiting the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southwestern Asia. The Greeks regarded these peoples as constituting one nation and called their country Mesopotamia, a name that could properly be applied to only a part of their territory. The Babylonians and Assyrians, themselves, on the other hand, regarded each other as alien peoples, though both belonged to the same Semitic stock. The Babylonians were the more ancient, and their territory lay to the south, where, many scholars believe, they had been preceded by a people of a different race.

Though the seat of this early civilisation is geographically small in extent, yet the peoples who entered into it were by no means homogeneous, nor was their history a continuous record of unbroken political succession. On the contrary, at least two different races of people were involved,—a Turanian stock in the early Babylonian history, a Semitic stock in all the later periods,—and at least three successive kingdoms or empires, not to speak of mere changes of dynasty. The earliest period known to us—that which left records at Nippur and Shirpurla, in old Babylonia—had its seat in the southern portion of the territory bordering on the sea; thence, seemingly, civilisation spread northward. Assyriologists are not fully agreed as to the share which the non-Semitic race had in this early civilisation. It has even been questioned whether these so-called Sumerians really existed at all.[15] In any event the Semitic Babylonians acquired full control at a very early period.

The Assyrian kingdom—which came to be a veritable world-empire—had its seat at Calah and afterwards at Nineveh. It conquered and absorbed the old Babylonian kingdom, and then reached out for domination to the east and to the west, finally overrunning even Egypt.

The Bible accounts preserve records of some of its most famous kings, including Sennacherib. The Greek legends are chiefly concerned with a mythical Semiramis, the alleged founder of Nineveh, and with a seemingly[319] mythical Sardanapalus, who perished after an inglorious reign, in the destruction of Nineveh, which came about suddenly and dramatically in the year 606 B.C.—the Sardanapalus myth being, however, based on an actuality.

After the destruction of Nineveh, Babylon, the capital of Babylonia, resumed renewed importance as a world metropolis. Nebuchadrezzar, the most famous king of this period, besieged Jerusalem and carried the Israelites to his capital (the Babylonian capital). The classical accounts preserve reminiscences of the magnificence of Babylon in this period. The course of the New Babylonian empire, though brilliant, was brief, ending with the overthrow of Babylon by the Persians under Cyrus in the year 538 B.C. Babylon was not, like Nineveh, totally destroyed; but it never regained autonomy or anything approaching its former importance. It was one of the Persian capitals for two centuries, until in 331 B.C., with the downfall of the Persian empire, it passed into the hands of Alexander the Great, who, after his eastern conquests, chose it as the capital of his newly acquired empire. But Alexander died in his new capital almost immediately, and his death was the last great world-historic event that occurred in Mesopotamia. In the course of a few centuries thereafter, the whole region that for so many years had been the very heart of the world’s civilisation, became a barren wilderness, and Babylon itself, like Nineveh before it, was reduced to a mere earth-covered mound of ruins, the very location of which was practically forgotten.

Such a fate was tragic enough; yet after all it seems less cruel than the destiny of such nations as Egypt, and in later time, Greece, which live on in senescence long after all vestige of their power has departed. And in any event, Mesopotamia had had its full share of glory, for no other region of the globe, within historic times, with the possible exception of Egypt alone, has so long held rank as a centre of influence and civilisation. If the earlier walls of the Temple of Bel (Baal) at Nippur really date from 6000 or 7000 years B.C. as the records seem to prove, there was a continuous, powerful empire in Mesopotamia for at least five or six thousand years. The civilisations of Greece, of Rome, or of any modern state, seem mere mushroom growths in comparison.

In studying the history of Egypt we have caught occasional glimpses of this oldest Asiatic civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, and it is almost impossible to avoid drawing comparisons between these two countries, so closely related are the two peoples in the minds of all students. It is true that the ethnological types are quite different, and that the two peoples, during the greater part of their existence, did not mingle much with one another. Often they were at war, and it is traditional that for the most part the Egyptians repelled rather than invited any advances from their Asiatic neighbours. Nevertheless, their own interests dictated a commercial policy that led first and last to an extensive intermingling between all the contemporary civilisations of western Asiatic antiquity, and there are abundant evidences that the same influence extended also to the Nile Valley.

But even had this not been the case,—even had Egypt and Mesopotamia been shut off absolutely one from the other,—it would still be impossible for the modern student to disassociate the two, so many are the links of association between them. The fact that these two are the oldest civilisations known to us, and the further fact that there has been a constant question in the minds of investigators as to which one of these ancient peoples can claim priority of development, form in themselves an indissoluble bond of union. Yet in some respects the story of the Babylonians and Assyrians is unique; because this well-nigh greatest of civilisations was blotted out absolutely[320] almost before the oldest European civilisation was under way. Egypt, indeed, declined in power at about the same period and permanently lost autonomy, but its pyramids and temples and numberless antiquities remain as obvious testimonials of its former greatness; whereas the monuments of Mesopotamia—the ruins of such wonderful cities as Nippur, Babylon, and Nineveh—were completely buried under the accumulating earth deposits of centuries, and almost absolutely lost to view. For more than two thousand years the names of these once famous cities were only reminiscences. No one knew accurately even their site, and scarcely an antiquity of any description was known to be preserved that evidenced the sometime greatness of the Mesopotamian civilisation.

During this long period a few reminiscences preserved in the writings of Berosus, Diodorus, Herodotus, and a few other classical writers, and in the text of Hebrew writings, gave all the clews that were obtainable, and apparently all that could ever be obtained regarding one of the most remarkable peoples of antiquity.

We have said that the entire destruction of the Mesopotamian civilisation gave it peculiar interest. It should not be forgotten, however, that at least one other very important people of antiquity, namely the Hittites, met with a like fate. Probably there were still others whose names even are unknown to us. But the story of Mesopotamia stands quite by itself in the fact that it has been very largely restored to us through the efforts of modern explorers. We have seen that the decipherment of the hieroglyphics led to a much fuller understanding of Egyptian history than had previously been possible; yet, after all, these new revelations sufficed to fill in the outlines of an old story, rather than to create an altogether new one. But in the case of Babylonia and Assyria the modern investigators had virtually a blank canvas upon which to work in reconstructing the history. The Bible references and the classical myths gave but the most shadowy outlines. Yet traditions are all powerful for the transmission of knowledge in a vague form, and throughout all generations it had never been doubted that the reminiscences of Mesopotamian greatness had a firm foundation in fact, though few historians were visionary enough to dare hope that more tangible evidence would ever be forthcoming, and not even the most enthusiastic dreamer could have suspected that such records as the nineteenth century has restored to us had been preserved.

Even now, looking back from the standpoint of accomplishment, it seems almost incredible that the monuments of a great civilisation—treasures of art, and voluminous literary records—should have been absolutely hidden from human view for a minimum period of more than two thousand years, and should then have been restored in almost their original condition. Yet such is the fact regarding the antiquities of Mesopotamia.

OUR SOURCES FOR MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY

The reports that have come down to us from antiquity dealing with the history of Babylonia and Assyria are relatively meagre in extent and decidedly untrustworthy from an historical standpoint. Without doubt numerous classical writers dealt with the subject, but of such writings, only a few have been preserved. So far as known, the principal native historian of the later period of Babylonian history was Berosus. He was a Chaldean priest living in the time of Alexander the Great, as his own writings testify. He had[321] access to the ancient documents of his country, and is believed to have made excellent use of them. Unfortunately, only meagre remnants of his history have come down to us, and these more or less distorted through the medium of transcribers, the chief of these being Alexander Polyhistor and Eusebius. Had we the entire work of Berosus, he would, perhaps, perform some such function for Mesopotamia as Manetho performed for Egypt; but as the case stands, the remnants of Berosus serve to transmit certain interesting traditions, particularly with reference to Babylonian cosmogony, rather than to preserve any considerable historical records.

The classical historian whose account of the Babylonians and Assyrians has been most largely copied was Ctesias. This writer was a Greek who served for seventeen years (415-398 B.C.) as court physician to the Persian king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and who wrote a history of Persia alleged to be based upon native documents. In this history Ctesias considered the contemporary civilisation, but he was interested rather in picturesque traditions than in the sober historical narratives, and the records he preserved are chiefly of a nature which the modern critical historian pronounces fabulous. The original work of Ctesias has perished, but its character is fairly established through the writings of other authors who used Ctesias as a source. Foremost among the latter is Diodorus, whose account of the Assyrians represents the ideas that were current throughout classical times, and continued in vogue until the nineteenth century.

The most authentic classical accounts of the Babylonians are those given by Herodotus and by Strabo, both of whom spoke as eye-witnesses. Unfortunately, these writers did not have access to the native materials, and their accounts, while throwing interesting sidelights upon the later civilisation, do very little towards enlightening us as to the actual history of the greatest of Asiatic peoples of antiquity.

A few other fragments have been preserved from the classical writings, notably some bits from Abydenus, preserved through Eusebius. To these must be added numerous references to the Babylonians and Assyrians in the biblical writings. Taken altogether, however, these classical and oriental traditions fail to give us more than the vaguest picture of Mesopotamian history.

The real sources of that history are the original chronicles of the Babylonians and Assyrians themselves, which were inscribed on stone slabs and on tablets of clay. The clay tablets, after being inscribed, were dried, forming almost imperishable bricks. Tens of thousands of these were preserved beneath the ruins of Mesopotamian cities, and were first brought to light in the nineteenth century. Among these are several lists of kings, and other chronological documents of a somewhat general character. One document attempts the synchronism of Babylonian and Assyrian history. Then there are numerous tablets and cylinders and wall inscriptions which record the deeds of individual kings, including such famous monarchs as Sennacherib. Vast quantities of documents are doubtless still buried in Mesopotamia, and a large proportion of the inscriptions that have been exhumed are still undeciphered. But enough of these documents have been discovered and read to restore the outline of Babylonian and Assyrian history as a whole; and for certain periods, including the time of greatest Assyrian power, very full records are at hand. The result of these recent discoveries has been the practical substitution of secure historical records for the old classical and oriental traditions regarding the Babylonians and Assyrians.

The modern workers who have assisted in the restoration of Mesopotamian[322] history through the recovery and decipherment of the monumental inscriptions make up in the aggregate a large company. The chief explorers of the earliest period were Botta and Layard. Then came Fresnel, Thomas, and Oppert, followed by Rassam, George Smith, Ernest de Sarzec; the Germans, Koldewey and Moritz, and the Americans, Peters, Hilprecht, and Haynes.

The work of interpreting the newly found Assyrian records began with Sir Henry Rawlinson in England, Eberhard Schrader in Germany, and a small company of other workers, about the middle of the nineteenth century. The difficulties of deciphering records in an unknown language, and of an extremely intricate character, at first seemed almost insuperable; but with the aid of the knowledge of Ancient Persian, already acquired earlier in the century through the efforts of Grotefend and his followers, together with the hints gained by comparison with the Hebrew language and other extant Semitic tongues, a working knowledge of the Assyrian language was at last attained. Since then the decipherment of the inscriptions has gone on unceasingly, and a constantly growing band of workers has added to our knowledge.

Most of the excavators and explorers have, very naturally, given us personal accounts of their labours. Botta’s labours, however, were chiefly made public through the publications of Victor Place; and in more recent times, Heuzey has published the chief accounts of the excavations of De Sarzec. Layard, on the other hand, the greatest of all Assyrian explorers, gave full accounts of his own discoveries, and interpreted the monuments as well as described them. He restored to us a picture of Mesopotamian civilisation somewhat as Wilkinson had done for Egypt. Of the more recent workers who have written about Babylonia and Assyria the most important are Meyer, Hommel, Winckler, Muerdter, and Delitzsch in Germany; Tiele in Holland; Lenormant, Babelon, Menant and Halévy in France; Sayce in England, and Peters, Hilprecht, Harper and Rogers in America.

Thanks to the records thus made available, the history of this most ancient civilisation is no longer a mere hazy figment of tradition, but has become a sharply outlined picture. We are able to trace, not indeed the origin of the Mesopotamian civilisation—for the beginnings of national life evade us here as elsewhere—but its very early development in the cities of old or southern Babylonia. Antiquarian documents, aided by estimates as to the rate of deposit of sediment at the mouth of the rivers, enable us to fix, at least approximately, the dates for this early civilisation. These figures cannot pretend to exact accuracy, but the Assyriologist assures us with some confidence that they carry us back to a period something like six or seven thousand years B.C. At this remote time the civilisation of southern Babylonia was already established in its main features. The people of Ur, Nippur, Shirpurla, and Babylon were able even then to build elaborate palaces and temples, to carve interesting sculptures, to make ornaments of glass, and to record their thought in words traced in the most complex script. In a word, the main characteristics of Mesopotamian civilisation were fully established several millenniums before the Christian era, and abundant proofs of this fact have been preserved to us.

It must not be supposed, however, that the records exhumed from the ruins of these ancient capitals have given us full information regarding the entire stretch of this long material existence. The fact is quite otherwise. Only comparatively short periods are covered fully by the historical records[323] in the wedge writing, and there are reaches of some thousands of years in the aggregate, regarding which our knowledge is still most fragmentary. Indeed, the history of the old Babylonian kingdom in its entirety is known at present only in the most general way. But it seems almost miraculous that we should know even the outlines of this ancient story.

THE ANCIENT KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA

The earliest known inhabitants of Babylonia were a people of whose origin nothing is known except that they were not Semites. After a time they are called sometimes Sumerians, sometimes Accadians. Sumer was the southern portion of Babylonia, Accad the northern. The Accadian language is now considered a dialect of the Sumerian, the older form.

Civilisation in the land goes back at least to 6000 B.C. Between 5000 and 4000 B.C. this people was invaded by a warlike Semitic race, the Babylonians of history, who came, perhaps, from Arabia. What portion of the aborigines the invaders did not expel or destroy they assimilated, gradually assuming the older civilisation.

The chronology of the earlier period is largely speculative. Recent chronology begins with the kingdom of Babylon about the time of Khammurabi. For the earlier kingdoms, we, for the most part, follow the dates of Professor Rogers.

Without referring to the legendary history of Babylonia, related by Berosus, which is mentioned elsewhere, our earliest knowledge of the land is of a country of independent kingdoms, the cities with the temples forming their centres. The ruler is often the patesi or high priest.

FOOTNOTES

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[337]

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

It should be explained here at the very beginning that in speaking of the Mesopotamian civilisation as a unit, we are adopting for the sake of convenience a form of expression that is not historically accurate. Even the word “Mesopotamia” cannot be justified on strict analysis. The word is from the Greek, and means, literally, “between the rivers,” an obvious reference to the fact that the important portion of the territory in question lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The word was used by the Greeks in indiscriminate application to Babylonia and Assyria, and its extreme convenience as a generic term has led to its retention in lieu of a better one; yet, as has been said, it cannot be applied with strict accuracy unless its etymological significance be quite overlooked; for, curiously enough, neither Babylon nor Nineveh was wholly situated in the territory which the Greek word describes. Babylon lay partly on the western shore of the Euphrates river, and Nineveh was situated on the eastern shore of the Tigris. But in common usage, as so often happens, the exact implication of the word “Mesopotamia” has been overlooked, and the word itself has come to be applied to the entire region of Babylonia and Assyria. In this sense, rather than in the more restricted one, we shall find it convenient as a substitute for the more cumbersome appellation, Babylonia-Assyria.

It has already been pointed out that we have to do with different races of people in dealing with Mesopotamian history. After a long dispute, carried on chiefly by philologists, it is now generally conceded that the earliest civilisation of southern Babylonia was due to a non-Semitic people, the Sumerians.[16] To this people, it would seem, must be ascribed the honour of developing the chief features of Mesopotamian civilisation, including the invention of the cuneiform system of writing. It is not at all clear at precisely[338] what time the Semitic people, destined ultimately to become predominant in this region, made their appearance. Nor is the place of Semitic origin agreed upon among students of the subject. Some authors,[17] as Von Kremer, Guidi, and Hommel, hold that Babylonia was itself originally the cradle of the race. Others, including Sprenger, Sayce, Schrader, De Goeje, Wright, and Barton, contend that the Semites invaded Babylonia from Arabia. Yet others, including Palgrave, Gerland, Bertin, Brinton, Nöldeke, Jastrow, Keane, and Schmidt, hold to the African origin; while a modification of these views advocated by Wiedemann, De Morgan, and Erman supposes that both the Semites and Hamites rose in Arabia, and had their common civilisation before the Hamites went to Africa. Confronted with such conflict of opinions, the historian must be content to regard the exact antecedents of the Semites, previous to their appearance in Babylonia, as quite unknown.

As to the date of the beginnings of Semitic civilisation in Mesopotamia, Dr. John P. Peters, making use of Ainsworth’s estimates as to the amount and rate of alluvial deposit at the head of the Persian Gulf, computes that the seacoast must have been established this side of the site of the city of Ur about 6600 B.C., which date must, therefore, represent the earliest possible period for the foundation of that city. Ur was apparently the most southerly city of old Babylonia, and Nippur apparently the most northerly. Dr. Peters’ excavations at Nippur lead him to base its foundation at some period previous to 6000 B.C., and possibly previous to 7000 B.C.a He sums up his theory as follows:

“My suggestion, from the various facts here marshalled, would be that the original home of civilisation in Babylonia was the strip of land from Nippur southward to the neighbourhood of Ur, and not, as has sometimes been argued, the region about Babylonia and northward to Sippara; while the latter region is in itself older, it does not seem to have been older as the home of civilised man.

“The ancestors of the civilisation of Babylonia seem to have come from the region between Nippur and what was then the coast of the Persian Gulf. This would accord also with the tradition preserved to us in later sources that civilisation came to Babylonia out of the Persian Gulf. Possibly Eridu, on the Arabian plateau near the western shore and not far from the head of what was then the Persian Gulf, may represent the oldest seat of that civilisation. However that may be, at a very early period Nippur became the centre of civilisation and religion, being founded at a time when everything below Ur probably was still under water. As early as the close, if not the beginning, of the seventh millennium B.C., this strip of land at the head of the then Persian Gulf seems to have been the home of the civilised men, and from here civilisation spread northward.”f

THE LAND

The land of the Euphrates and Tigris lies between the Iranian country on the east and the Syrio-Arabian district on the west, from the chain of mountains of the Zagros to the rocky heights of the Lebanon and the Syrian desert. From the mountains of Armenia, in which both rivers have their source, the land gradually declines to the plain, extending from the point of their union to where they fall into the Persian Gulf.

The upper-river beds, winding through a high-lying, sometimes fertile steppe country, are surrounded by heights, where plane and cypress groves[339] alternate with green meads and a rich growth of many-coloured flowers and plants.

As the land grows flatter, these valleys widen to fertile pastures on the river-banks, whilst the wide central plain grows more and more bare and treeless, until it ends at last in a desert trodden only by a few wandering shepherds with their flocks, and full of ostriches, bustards, and wild game. This is known as the between-river (Mesopotamia) district, which extends into a wide plain of rich brown soil, about a hundred miles above the mouth, where the two rivers approach most nearly, and the banks touch the so-called Median wall.

This plain, famous for its uncommon fertility as well as for its historic importance, the “Shinar” Land of the Semites, and the Babylonia of the Greeks, is as rainless as Egypt, and would have dried up into a sandy desert, had not nature and human artifice contrived means of irrigation.

For in the spring, when the snow melts on the Armenian mountains, both rivers overflow their banks and water the thirsty land. This overflowing of the gently moving Euphrates is as regular as that of the Nile; the wide tract of water is unopposed in its inundation of the plain and, like the Nile, it deposits a rich mud soil, and man’s resources are called into play to aid nature by the artificial conduct of water and by means of dams to give the neighbouring district a share in the fertilising irrigation.

But the bed of the Tigris growing decidedly more narrow as it nears the sea, receives the devastating stream from the eastern and northern mountains, and the force of the waters transports the fertile soil from the fields and transforms the plains into a wide swampy land, covered with reeds and rushes.

The inhabitants, therefore, had the double task of stemming the force of the stream to prevent destructive inundations, and of securing a course for the fertilising waters by canals and lakes. So the Babylonian plains were sown with such a number of small and great canals, dams and ditches, that the waterworks and means of irrigation were a source of wonder and astonishment to the whole of antiquity. These canals, cut in every direction and decreasing in size until they were almost rivulets, were furnished with countless machines and pump-works. Many of these canals, which should have been kept free by continuous clearing from the stoppage of mud, were lost in the sand; others, emptying into the Tigris, increased its size, the nearer it approached the sea, while the waters of the Euphrates were decreased through the drain of the canals.b

The Tigris and the Euphrates have both flood seasons and carry their waters over a wide extent of country, exactly as the Nile. This fact is so perfectly clear that there can be no doubt concerning it, though Herodotus directly asserts the contrary, saying, “The river does not, as in Egypt, overflow the corn lands of its own accord, but is spread over them by the help of engines.” The rise is indeed not so prolonged as the rise of the Nile, but its influence is, nevertheless, distinctly to be seen. Furthermore, the water was retained in sufficient quantity to supply an irrigation system far back from the river for the grain harvest, after the fall of the river. This entire system is now a vast ruin. The river rises and falls as it wills, and sweeping far over the western bank, turns the country into a morass. The harm of this is both negative and positive. It makes impossible any such great ingathering of grain as existed when this great valley was the world’s granary, and it fills the land with a dangerous miasma, which produces fevers and leaves the inhabitants weak and sickly. There are few instances in the world of a sadder waste of a beautiful and fertile country.e

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Old writers give the most brilliant descriptions of the wonders of the district. Xenophon praises the quality and quantity of the dates, of the groves of palms which line the banks of the lower course of the two rivers and break the uniformity of the landscape, and are still very productive where the cruel Turkish rule has not changed the garden into a desert.

Herodotus lays particular stress upon the natural fertility of the country, for he writes: “Babylon is, as we know, famed for the best tillage of all lands, producing always two hundredfold of fruit and, in very good years, three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and barley are all four fingers wide, and I very well know, but I would rather not say, to what size the millet and seed grow; for I am certain that those who have not been in Babylon, will not believe it. There are few trees, no fig trees, no vine, no olive. They have no oil but what they make from sesame. But palm trees grow all over the country, and the fruit is eaten and honey and wine made from it.”

This country is now almost a desert, without buildings and vegetation, a world of tower-like ruins, which vary the monotony of the vast plains.

“From these heights,” says Ritter in his Geography, “one sees in the solemn stillness of this ruined world the far-reaching wide mirror of the Euphrates, winding majestically through that solitude like a royal pilgrim among the silent ruins of his departed kingdom. The palaces and temples, and the magnificent buildings, have all dropped into dust and ruin; hanging gardens and blooming paradises have fallen into gray, rush-grown, swampy marshes; and even there, where once the captive Israelites hung up their harps in the royal capital, and sang their songs of mourning over fallen Jerusalem, only a few imperishable willows remain, and the silence is unbroken by a voice of joy or mourning.”

Assyria, a mountainous district between the Tigris and the mountainous western boundary of Iran, is not so fertile as Babylonia, but its high position gives it a bracing climate.

Like the southern plains, it has little rain, but it is partially watered by the numerous rivers which flow eastward and westward to the Tigris, and partially by the canals and water conduits, and is rendered tolerably fertile by careful cultivation.

In the south only a few palm trees and cypresses break the monotony of the wide tilled fields, as in the Babylonian plain, but in the centre of the country are Aturia and Arbelitis (Adiabene) where the Upper Zab, the Zabatus or Lycus of classical writers, pours its blue waters into the Tigris, and there are fruitful hills, with protected valleys, full of corn, wine, sesame, figs, olives, and oranges; naphtha streams give forth their precious oil, and farther northward on the borders of Armenia and Media there are mountainous districts, the heights of which are crowned with woods of oak and pine. The eastern district at the foot of the Zagros (Chalonitis) is particularly prized for its wealth of palms, fruit trees, and olives, and the country of Arpakha (Arrapachitis) in the Chaldean mountains is considered the home of Abraham. From hence he descended into the river district of the centre and settled in the land around Kharran.

Northward lies the pasture land of Mesopotamia, whose wide plains became the scenes of bloody battles, and where races and royal families sought to eternalise their transitory power by the foundation of cities, which have mostly vanished, leaving no trace behind them. Like the Assyrian hill country, it gradually declines into grass-grown steppes until, in the south, it becomes a desert whose waterless wastes are trodden only by wandering Arabs.b

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So far back as we have yet been able to penetrate, we find in the southern part of Mesopotamia a number of petty independent kingdoms, governed from their capital cities. Our present knowledge of this land and its inhabitants may be briefly summed up.

After the river Euphrates, with countless windings and sharp falls, has cleft the Syrio-Mesopotamian plain where it fertilises the districts contiguous on its banks, it approaches to within a few miles of the Tigris, and both streams water a completely flat plain, intersected by numerous rivers and canals, and, for the most part, flooded by the Euphrates in the summer.

The numerous districts on both sides of the lower Tigris and west of the Euphrates which are out of reach of the irrigation have a desert character, as rain is as rare here as in Egypt. But the irrigated land was proportionately fertile; at least it was so in antiquity and the Middle Ages. The district at the mouth of the streams was of a marshy character with numerous swamps and lakes. In olden times the confluence of both rivers, at latitude about 31° N., formed a long narrow bay which has now been filled up by their deposits. The Arabian Desert lies at the west of the Euphrates, or rather on its western arm, the Pallakopas. The country on the east of the Tigris rises gradually to the wild mountainous boundary of the Iranian highlands, which descends in terrace form to the Tigris, to which it sends numerous rivers, which in earlier times flowed direct into the sea.

At the present time the greater part of this district is a swampy desert traversed only by wandering tribes, whilst in antiquity, and again at the time of the Caliphs, it was made one of the most fertile countries in the world by dint of careful irrigation, regulation, and the construction of dams and canals.[18]

The most ancient population of this country formed several closely related races which had no connection with the other nations of Western Asia, but in the course of historical evolution they lost their language and nationality and were submerged in the neighbouring races.

In the land of Makan, the district of the mouth of the two chief rivers, were the Sumerians (Sumer, with its chief city of Ur, on the Euphrates); and in the northern part of the river country (Melucha land) from Erech, now Warka, upwards to the borders of the Mesopotamian steppes, lived the Accadians, so called from Agade, their capital, north of Babylon. To the east of the Tigris, far into the pathless districts of the Zagros Mountains, dwelt the warlike races of the Kossæans (Assyrian Kasshu). From their home, mode of life and character, they were evidently the predecessors of the modern Kurds, who belong, by language, to the Iranians. Next came the land of Elam, or Anshan, as it was called in the language of the country, the district of the rivers Choaspes and Eulæos, called by the Greeks Kissian, with the capital Shushan, the Susa of the Greeks.

Whilst the Kossæans were always a wild mountainous people, and the inhabitants of the plains of Elam, although they had a firmly established state organization, were dependent on their western neighbours for culture, Sumer and Accad (i.e. Babylonia) possessed an ancient and a complete, independently evolved culture, which, although second to that of the Lower[342] Nile in innate worth and exclusive evolution, perhaps exceeded it in historical influence. The surplus of water from inundations was distributed over the country by means of canals and dykes. Thus ensued a better-ordered life of the state from the closer union of the different provinces. The temples of the great gods formed the centres of the different districts from which, as with the Egyptians, the cities of Babylonia arose first everywhere.

In Ur (now El-Mugheir) there was a temple of the moon-god Sin (or Nannar). In Eridu (now Abu Shahrein) was the temple of Ea, the ancient god of the ocean, and in Larsa (now Senkereh) that of the sun-god Babbar (or Shamash), the lord of the city. The latter was worshipped in like manner in Sippar (now Abu Habba), whilst in the neighbouring Agade (Accad) the goddess Anunit was the deity of the city. On the south lay the sacred “Gate of the Gods” Ka-Dingira, the Semitic Babel (Babylon), the capital of the country. [With it was later united the city of Borsippa.] The city Erech (Orchoë, now Warka), the sanctuary of the goddess Nana (Ishtar), was held in special veneration. North of Larsa was Girsu; on the canal Shatt-el-Khai was probably Lagash (now Telloh); north of this the city of Isin; near it was for a time the chief city of all Babylonia, Nippur, which was the home of the god Bel. It is here that the excavations of the University of Pennsylvania have been so fruitful. About fifteen miles northeast of Babylon was Kutha (now Tel-Ibrahim), whose god was Nergal; near Kutha was Kish. In the northern limit of Babylonia were Dur-Kurigalzu, nearly opposite the present Baghdad; and Upi [or Opis.]

It seems therefore that the lay dynasty arose mainly from the priesthood of these temples, for the kings are universally found in closest relation to the city deities, in whose honour they built or restored the temples, and down to their last day the priestly dignity ranked foremost in the title of the Babylonian kings.c

ORIGINAL PEOPLES OF BABYLON: THE SUMERIANS

It is coming to be a common agreement among Assyriologists that the original peoples of Babylon were of a race that was not Semitic. Just what it was these scholars are not yet prepared to say; although the inclination of belief is that it was an Indo-European race and most likely of the Turanian family. An attempt has recently been made to connect the aborigines with the Ugro-Finnish branch of the Ural-Altaic family, but with what success it is still too soon to say. But whatever these people, the Sumerians, may have been, they occupied the land of Babylonia until dislodged by a great wave of Semitic migration. This fact has not gone unchallenged, and from the ranks of Philology there has come a strong contention for a Semitic origin of the Babylonians, and the assertion that the Sumerian texts “do not represent a real language, but a kind of cipher written according to an artificial system of grammar.” And throughout the following discussion, written by Professor Hommel, it must not be forgotten that Professor Halévy, the originator of the theory of the Sumerian texts summarised above, still champions his contention and adduces evidence for it that seems to him conclusive.a

It has often been observed that southern Babylonia was originally the proper home of the Sumerians, while as early as the beginning of the fourth millennium before the Christian era the Semitic Babylonians were already[343] settled in northern Babylonia, and, as is proved by the Naram-Sin inscription and several dating from the time of Sargon, his father (circa 3800 B.C.) had already acquired the Sumerian character (and, by inference, the Sumerian civilisation). In the case of southern Babylonia, the discoveries at Telloh have put us in possession of a number of sculptures—some of them in relief, others severed heads of statues, dating from the period between circa 4000 B.C., or earlier, and circa 3000. These present two different types. One is characterised by a rounded head with slightly prominent cheek bones, always beardless, and usually with clean-shaven crown. To this type certainly belong the representations of vanquished foes on the archaic sculpture, known as the Vulture stele, though the primitive method of representing the brow and nose by a single slightly curved line gives a merely superficial resemblance to the Semitic cast of countenance. The other is a longer-skulled (dolichocephalous) type, with thick, black hair and long, flowing beard.

It is certainly by no mere accident that the heads of the Telloh statues, most of which are supposed to represent kings, are of the first-mentioned (Sumerian) type, while the bronze votive offerings, which likewise bear the name of Gudea, are carried, as is evident at a glance, by Semites. And as there were Semites among the subjects of Gudea, where the Sumerians were the dominant race, so we find the same Semitic type clearly marked in the figures round the stem of a vase; while the party of musicians, who are seen approaching with submissive gestures on the fragment of a bas-relief, which probably also dates from the reign of Gudea, must likewise be of Semitico-Babylonian descent.

Fortunately, ancient Babylonian art gives us the opportunity, not merely of studying the wholly non-Semitic language of the earliest inhabitants of Babylonia in lengthy bilingual original inscriptions such as many of the statues of Gudea bear, but of seeing with our own eyes the bodily semblance of this singular people, and so observing the striking correspondence of non-Semitic elements in speech and facial type. In this connection we would draw attention to an ancient Babylonian statue of a female figure, now in the Louvre at Paris. We may confidently assume that the woman represented is a Sumerian and not a Semitic Babylonian; and it may thus be regarded as a splendid counterpart to the Gudea statues, which by the whole character of workmanship it calls to mind. Whether we have here a queen or some other lady of high rank (the supposition that she is a goddess appears to be excluded by the absence of the head-dress goddesses are wont to wear) cannot, of course, be determined with certainty. It is only natural that various mixed types should have developed in course of time, especially in northern Babylonia; and many of the faces we meet with—on the seal-cylinders more particularly—may be representations of such.

That the Sumerians, like the Semites, were not an autochthonous race in Babylonia follows from the condition of the soil, which had to be rendered fit for agriculture, and indeed, for human habitation, by a system of canals. Whence, then, did the Sumerians originally come, before they took possession of the swampy Euphrates valley and settled there?

There is a word in Sumerian, “Kar” (Turkish yer), which means “country” (as does the Turkish word). But in Sumerian it has also come to signify “mountain” and likewise “east” (since the mountains lie only in the east of Babylonia)—meanings which the Turkish word does not bear. This is, therefore, a clear indication that, even after the Sumerians had[344] settled in Babylonia, the range on the Median frontier and what lay behind it always passed with them for their true country, the original home whence they had come. There is also extreme significance in the fact that they were originally unacquainted with both the lion and the horse, as also with wine (and consequently with the vine) and the palm tree; for they had no names for them, and called the lion “great dog” (nug magh), the horse “ass of the mountains” or “of the east,” wine the “drink of life” (gish-tin, from gash-tin), and the palm “tree of Magan” (mis-magan), or “the upright” (ügin, in its Semitic form mus-ukannu).

THE SEMITIC BABYLONIANS

By far the greater part of Babylonian literature, as well as the many official documents of the kings of Babylon (in the more restricted sense of the term) and Asshur is written in a language which was clearly perceived, as early as 1849, to be intimately related to the so-called Semitic languages of Anterior Asia. The relationship is but confirmed by the type presented to us in various statues and sculptures in relief, apart, of course, from the Sumerian sculptures of the very oldest period; though in Babylonia we frequently meet with a hybrid type, yet even in this the Semitic element is unmistakable. In the heads of Assyrian figures the Semitic characteristics are very strikingly marked. But since the Babylonians and Assyrians were a single nation as far as language is concerned, and differed in blood only by the fact that there seems to have been a strong admixture of some foreign element in the former, while the latter presents a strongly marked and far purer racial type, it may be taken as proved that this type is that of the Semitic races, a conclusion which is doubly vouched for by language and by facial conformation. It has already been remarked in the foregoing chapter, that (unlike the Sumerians) the Semitic population of Babylonia, which we meet with in northern Babylonia as early as 3800 B.C., and which predominated there from 2500 B.C. (or even earlier) onwards, was distinguished by an abundant growth of black hair and long beards.

From the circumstance that in the third millennium before the Christian era the old Babylonian kings who resided in Middle Babylonia (particularly at Nisin and Erech) and in Ur and Larsa bore Semitic names, though the inscriptions that have come down to us from their reigns are written entirely in Sumerian, we are probably justified in concluding that in Middle Babylonia, where the dominant Sumerian population of the south and the dominant[345] Semitic population of the north must have come most directly into contact, the interfusion of the two races was at that time taking place on a very large scale. On the other hand, in northern Babylonia, where Sumerians had lived from the very earliest period, but had never risen to any political importance as compared with the Semitic immigrants, the two must have lived strictly apart down to 2000 B.C. (the latest date of which we can be certain), for not long before that time colonists went out from northern Babylonia and founded the empire of Assyria. The far greater purity of the Semitic type among the Assyrians, together with the absolute identity of their language and civilisation with that of Babylonia, leads inevitably to the inference that the intermixture of Sumerian blood with Semitic in North Babylonia had either not begun, or had as yet proceeded but a very little way.

Tested thus by philology, the Assyrio-Babylonian language, together with Canaanitish (under which title we include Phœnician, Hebrew, and Moabitish), Aramaic (Syrian, the so-called Biblical Chaldee, Palmyrene, etc.), and Arabic (and under this heading not only the Sabæan tongue of southern Arabia, but the Ethiopian and Amharic languages of Abyssinia, should be placed), belong to a single well-defined group which we have long been accustomed to call Semitic (cf. Stade’s Geschichte des Volkes Israel) and the races which spoke and speak them are known to ethnology as Semites. From the remotest antiquity down to modern times these races have maintained a singular purity of blood and racial type; the Canaanites represented in Egyptian tombs of the XIIth Dynasty, the Assyrian heads in the bas-reliefs of Nineveh, the features of Jews at the present time living in the midst of Indo-Germanic nations, and the Bedouins who to-day roam the Syrian and Arabian deserts, all exhibit a family likeness so remarkable that we see that throughout the whole course of history they can have mingled but little with alien races. The question of how and from what causes the Semitic type in Assyria came to be preserved in greater purity than in Babylonia itself, whence the Assyrians emigrated, is one that has been briefly touched upon above.

Under these circumstances it is only to be expected that the constant type of character proper to other Semites should be discoverable, or, at least, in part recognisable in the Babylonians and Assyrians; although we are bound to take into account the fact that even in later days the Hebrews retained much of their old nomadic habits, that the Aramæans of the Assyrian period were for the most part nomadic, and that the Arabs are so still; while from the very beginning of their appearance in history the Semitic inhabitants of the regions about the Euphrates and Tigris are a home-dwelling people on a high level of civilisation. Many traits of primitive national[346] character tend to be obliterated or modified by such an advance to a superior stage of civilisation, while others, foreign to the brother or kindred races which remained longer or still remain in the nomadic stage, are developed.

In the Assyrians and Babylonians, as a matter of fact, we must meet with so much that recalls instinctively their kin with those whom the Bible and universal history have long rendered us familiar that it offers the fullest confirmation of the conclusions arrived at by a study of their language and physical type. It is very difficult to compress into a few words a correct description of Semitic national character.

Eduard Meyer, in his otherwise admirable Geschichte des Alterthums, says, “A very matter of fact habit of thought, keen observation of detail, a calculating intellect ever directed to practical aims, keeping the creations of the imagination completely under control and averse from any freer flight of the spirit into the Illimitable, such are the characteristics that distinguish the Arabs and Phœnicians, Hebrews and Assyrians,”—a judgment which, though in the main correct, is nevertheless not exhaustive. [Some of Professor Meyer’s other estimates are less satisfactory to Professor Hommel, who quotes the following with entire disapproval, claiming that they quite misrepresent the true character of the Semitic mind: “This same abominably matter-of-fact habit of thought, which dominates the Koran and by means of which it wrought its effect, lies at the root of the human sacrifices of the Canaanites, the religious phrases of the Assyrians, and, finally, of Yahvism” (i.e. the religion of the Old Testament). “The relation of the individual to the god is regarded in a strictly rationalistic and calculating spirit. An ethical or mystical relation to the Deity is wholly alien to the Semitic mind.”] Compare these and other passages of the same sort [Professor Hommel continues] with the fact that, on the contrary, a monotheistic tendency stronger than in any other race in the world, and combining with it the idea of a heartfelt surrender of the whole man to the Deity, was one of the principal characteristics of the Semitic mind as a whole (though most highly developed among the Israelites).

It is true that the cruelty of the Assyrians to foreign prisoners of war, which often shocks us and estranges our sympathies from the whole nation, recall certain instances of a like defect among the ancient Israelites too strongly not to tempt us to think of it as a Semitic propensity; but nevertheless these are mere excesses and excrescences which must not be set to[347] the account of national character. The Semite is not naturally cruel. If he were so, the trait must have come out most strongly in the Bedouin Arabs, who for centuries have remained at the barbaric stage in religious matters; whereas this is not so, but rather the reverse. With many races (some of them Indo-Germanic) of whom the most unspeakable horrors and acts of violence are recorded in the course of history, sheer lust of blood and torture has been the motive of such actions (or rather crimes), while the cruelties just referred to sprang from the dark side (revolting, it must be confessed) of a national virtue: true zeal for the Holiest.

THE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE BABYLONIAN SEMITE

On such questions as the degree of kinship in which the Babylonians and Assyrians stood to other Semites, their original home, their last halting-places, and consequently the sequence of Semitic migrations, Eduard Meyer holds the same views as the famous orientalist, Sprenger, to wit, that Arabia, i.e. the desert as distinct from the arable land, used from the very earliest times to send forth the surplus of her predatory and rapacious Bedouin population to the great pastoral districts in the vicinity, that is, to Palestine, the plain of Mesopotamia (Aram), and, in times long out of mind, to northern Babylonia also; that they were, so to speak, deposited there from time to time, and that all Semitic nations whom we meet with in a state of civilisation in the course of subsequent history have come into being in this manner.

“But this ingenious theory has been directly refuted by later investigations set on foot by A. von Kremer, and followed up by Ign. Guidi at Rome, and, more especially, by myself, with a view to discovering what domestic animals and cultivated plants were known to the original Semitic stock. By the year 1879 Guidi and I had come independently and, to some extent, by different ways to the conclusion that the original home of the Semites could not possibly be Arabia, but must be sought farther to the northeast. In the treatise, Die sprachgeschichtliche Stellung des Babylonisch-Assyrischen, I succeeded in proving further that the people who afterwards became the Babylonians and Assyrians must have separated from the common stock in some part of central Asia where the lion was indigenous, and emigrated into northern Babylonia through one of the passes of the Medio-Elamite range certainly no later than the fifth millennium B.C. The rest, however, came by way of the southern shore of the Caspian Sea—probably towards the end of the fourth millennium and at all events later than the Hamites of northern Babylonia—and entered what was afterwards Aramæan Mesopotamia from the north, then occupied it, and spread gradually from thence to Syria, Palestine, and Arabia.” (Hommel.) So, by subsequent offshoots and migrations, they became the Aramæans, Canaanites, and Arabs.

This theory furnishes, on the one hand, the first satisfactory explanation of many points in which Babylonian development, in language and various respects, differs from that of other Semites. On the other hand, it sets the large amount they have in common in a most interesting light, since it proves to be the primitive heritage of the Semitic race.

The whole question of the manner of Semitic migrations and offshoots is one that cannot be a matter of indifference to the historian, as may be objected in some quarters; and for a right understanding of the history of Babylonia in the earliest times, it is of the utmost consequence that we should[348] know whether the Semitic Babylonians were a distinct branch, as compared with their brethren, whose relations among themselves were much closer, and whether the beginning of their migration had led their steps through the land where grew the olive, fig, vine, and other cultivated plants not to be found in Babylonia; and lastly, it is imperative for a right comprehension of the history of Semitic civilisation to arrive at a decision on these questions. The fact that we find in the Assyrio-Babylonian language no trace of the common Semitic name (found in Aramaic, Canaanitish, and Arabic) for the three plants just mentioned, and others of the same nature, constitutes, together with weighty philological considerations, the positive argument in favour of the theory I have set forth: namely, that the route by which the Semitic settlers of the lower Euphrates came did not lie through regions where these plants are indigenous, but that they migrated in advance of the rest of the Semites straight from the east or northeast into anterior Asia and so to their new home of Babylonia.d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER II. OLD BABYLONIAN HISTORY

Recent researches in old Babylonia have brought to light a very large quantity of historical documents which tell a most important story, inasmuch as they have to do with the very remotest periods of antiquity. At Telloh, the site of the ancient city of Shirpurla, the French explorers have found an abundance of interesting material, while the Americans have exhumed, and are still exhuming, at Nippur, a mass of documents which bids fair to rival in quantity the voluminous records from the libraries of the Assyrian kings. In a single season’s excavating, Mr. Haynes has very recently brought to light thousands of inscribed tablets, some of which date from a period as long anterior to the time of the great Assyrian kings as that time is to our own.

The historian is to be particularly congratulated in that many of these ancient documents have the most direct bearing upon his studies. It has already been pointed out that the Babylonians were much more amply endowed with historical sense than were the Egyptians. They had a tolerably full appreciation of the importance of chronology, and though, like the Egyptians, they lacked a fixed era from which to reckon, they, to some extent, compensated for this defect by the ample series of king lists and “synchronisms” which various monarchs caused to be written. Several of these chronological documents have been restored to us by the various excavators, and, thanks to these, the outlines of considerable periods of early Babylonian history are now more accurately known than many much more recent epochs of occidental history.

Unfortunately, these ancient lists consist, for the most part, of tables of names having strange and unfamiliar sounds. To the average reader these names are necessarily repellant. Such words as E-anna-tum, Urumush[350] or Alusharshid, Samsu-iluna, Kadashman-Kharbe cannot well be otherwise than mystifying when unconnected with any vivid sequence of tangible events. And for the most part the names of these earliest rulers of Babylonia stand, in the present state of our knowledge, as mere names, with only here and there a suggestion of tangibility. Now and then we hear that a bas-relief of a certain king has been preserved, as in the case of one Ur-Nina, “builder of an edifice attached to the temple of Nina at Lagash,”[19] and in such a case the mind conjures a curious world of associations at thought of an actual likeness, real or alleged, being preserved for a period of more than six thousand years. The king whose image is thus tangibly brought to view after all these centuries of oblivion must seem a very real personage, however little else is known of him or of his achievements.

Again, in the case of certain other monarchs, there are brief records of campaigns and conquests against neighbouring peoples whose very names, perhaps, have been preserved to us only through this incidental mention. In such cases the mind is stimulated to the formation of vague pictures of unknown peoples of that remote era, and the least imaginative person must feel a bewildered sense of wonderment as to what these peoples were like, whence they came, and whither they vanished. But for that matter the Babylonian kings themselves, and the peoples over whom they ruled, seem shadowy and mysterious enough, to say nothing of their neighbours. The present knowledge does not by any means suffice to give us a full list of the names of these early monarchs.

In all probability there are lists still in existence buried in the ruins of various cities, as yet unexplored, that in time will restore to us a reasonably full record of those long stretches of time which now seem so hazy. In numerous places the excavations are still going on, discoveries are daily being made, undeciphered material is being read; in a word, new chapters of this oldest past are being almost daily brought to light. Whatever is written to-day regarding early Babylonian history must then, in the nature of the case, be subject to possible revision to-morrow. At least this is true to the extent that additions are sure to be made to the present incomplete knowledge in the near future. It does not follow, however, that the knowledge of the present will be altogether superseded. Such king lists as have been already deciphered, covering in the aggregate considerable periods of time, may be depended upon, in general, as accurate and permanent records, which will be supplemented rather than supplanted by the new records of future discovery. Meantime, we must be content with the glimpses into here and there an epoch, and with the citation of here and there a name, covering as best we may some three or four thousand years of Babylonian history in a few meagre chapters.

Tantalising as it is to catch such mere glimpses into realms that must be fascinating could we but know their fuller history, there is at least a certain consolation in the thought that our generation is the first within the past two thousand years to gain even a glimpse of these epochs of history. Even in classical times nothing was known of early Babylonia: such reminiscences of Mesopotamian greatness as were preserved pertained to the later Assyrian history and to New Babylonia. And the Assyrians and New Babylonians themselves were possessed of but little information regarding their remote ancestors, whose records were, in the main, as completely[351] hidden from them as they have been from all succeeding generations of men until our own time.

To co-ordinate properly the great mass of information, unearthed of late years concerning the numerous states that existed in Babylonia in the earliest historic period, is the task that Dr. Hugo Radau has undertaken with great success. The following extract from his recently published work[20] will give the reader the latest knowledge of these petty kingdoms, and enable him to understand how the greater ones absorbed the lesser, and how the way was thus paved for the union of all Babylonia under one ruler.a

THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY

The oldest king of Babylonia of whom we have any record, is Enshagkushanna, whose date we have placed before 4500 B.C. He calls himself “lord of Kengi,” the southern part of Babylonia. As to his nationality, whether he was a so-called “Sumerian” or a “Semite,” we have no means of knowing. Besides “lord of Kengi,” he seems to have had another title, viz. “king of … “ The lacuna probably contained the names of the capital of the kingdom. He must have waged war against Kish in northern Babylonia, which city he terms “wicked of heart.” He was the victor, and presented the spoil to “Enlil, king of the lands.” Enlil—the later Bel—was the chief god in Nippur; Nippur accordingly was called En-lil-ki, the “city of Enlil.” Hence Enlil of Nippur seems to have been the god who wielded the chief influence over the inhabitants of Early Babylonia. From inscriptions of certain patesis[21] of Shirpurla, as well as from those of Lugalzaggisi, we know that this temple was under the control of the king, who called himself accordingly patesi-gal, “the great patesi.” But it also had its own “chief local administrator,” the dam-kar-gal, who in his turn had several minor priests or patesis under him. The cult of this god seems to have been well arranged; the king, being the summus episcopus, had a host of other officers (priests) under him, who exercised the ordinary functions of the so-called priesthood of Bel. Few as the historical notices are, yet they enable us to get an insight into the condition of the land and of the people at this remote time. They show us that a struggle went on between the south (Kengi) and the north (Kish) which struggle lasted undoubtedly for several centuries.

Prominent cities at this time were the capital of Kengi, i.e. Shirpurla-Girsu, as we shall see later on; not Erech (Hilprecht), Nippur, and Kish.

It is necessary, however, before tracing the different steps in the development of Kish, to turn our attention to a kingdom called in the inscriptions “Shirpurla.” The inscriptions of the rulers of this kingdom give us an impression of a power and might which presupposes centuries for its development. All that we know of its art and civilisation tends in the same direction.

THE RULERS OF SHIRPURLA

Shirpurla is the modern Tel-Loh (or Telloh) where De Sarzec found the inscriptions relating to the rulers of this dynasty. It is situated fifteen[352] hours north of Mugheir, on the east side of the Shatt-el-Khai, and about twelve hours east of Warka. At this early time the city of Shirpurla seems to have included four component parts, viz. Girsu, Nina, Uruazagga, Erim. Thus it happened that one and the same king might call himself either “king of Shirpurla” or “king of Girsu.” These suburbs were built by various rulers in honour of their favourite gods or goddesses. Whether Shirpurla is the right reading, or Sirgulla (Hommel), we do not know. According to Pinches, Guide to the Kuyunjik Gallery, p. 7, London, 1883, and Babyl. Records, iii, p. 24, Shirpurla may read Lagash, which reading is adopted throughout by Jensen in K. B. iii. We retain the old reading Shirpurla, because this writing occurs most frequently in the monuments.

The rulers of Shirpurla may conveniently be grouped under four divisions:

(1) The dynasty of Urukagina—beginning with this ruler or his predecessor(s) and ending with Lugalshuggur and his successor(s).

(2) The dynasty of Ur-Nina, ending with Lummadur.

(3) The patesis between Lummadur and Ur-Ba’u.

(4) Ur-Ba’u and his successors, ending with Gala-Lama.

To Urukagina, the oldest member of the first dynasty of Shirpurla, we have assigned the approximate date of 4500 B.C. His greatness consisted not so much in successful wars against the neighbouring cities, as in securing a peaceful administration for his country and city. As “king of Girsu-Shirpurla,” he devoted his energy to the building of different storehouses, that should take up “the abundance of the countries,” and erected temples for different gods—thus showing his devotion and piety. He built “for Nina the beloved canal, the canal Nina-ki-tum-a,” and thus supplied his city with water. Bel of Nippur still exercises the highest influence. Ningirsu (“the lord of Girsu”) is the chief city-god, under whose control the capital stands. He is the Gud or “hero” of Enlil. In somewhat later inscriptions, Ningirsu has the title gud-lig-ga, “the strong hero” of Enlil. Many other gods are mentioned in his inscriptions.

To this oldest dynasty of Shirpurla belongs also a certain En-gegal (“lord of abundance” or “very rich”). He, like Urukagina, calls himself “lugal Pur-shir-la,” “king of Shirpurla.” Besides this he bears the proud title “lugal ki-gal-la,” “the great king,” and terms himself shib (dingir) Nin-gir-su, “the priest of Ningirsu,” a title similar to that of patesi-gal. From the title “the great king” we may venture to conclude that he, unlike his predecessor, must have carried his arms successfully against his enemies, who had previously succeeded in plundering Shirpurla; but fate decreed that his royal capital should be reduced to the seat of a patesi. Kish, having been defeated some time before by Enshagkushanna, seems to have acquired new strength. Its king, Mesilim, became lord paramount of Shirpurla, thus reducing its rulers to mere patesis. The name of only one of these earliest patesis is preserved to us, i.e. Lugal-shug-gur, who is mentioned in the inscription of Mesilim. The sovereignty of Kish over Shirpurla does not seem to have lasted very long. Shirpurla regained its former glory under a new dynasty, namely, that of Ur-Nina.

With Ur-Nina begins a new dynasty, probably the mightiest of early Babylonia, the duration of its sovereignty extending from 4300 B.C. to 4100 B.C. Looking at the art and the inscriptions of these kings, we cannot help thinking that in Shirpurla civilisation must have been far advanced, so far advanced as to force upon us the conclusion that “several centuries have elapsed before men could reach this stage of civilisation.” The greater[353] number of these art treasures are preserved in the Louvre; the inscriptions found on them have been published in Découvertes en Chaldée and in the Revue d’Assyriologie.

The first king of this dynasty was Ur-Nina (servant of Nina). The dynasty of Urukagina must have been reduced to mere nothingness by the kings of Kish, so that Ur-Nina found it easy to take possession of the throne. He must have been of an old family, for he mentions the name of his father and grandfather, who have the title neither of patesi nor of king. He, like his predecessor seems to have been great in peace. He built temples and various storehouses. A passage in his inscriptions where he records the building of the “wall of Shirpurla,” suggests that the old enemy, Kish, was still troublesome, so that he found it necessary to fortify his capital against the deadly enemies from the north.

The son of Ur-Nina, who succeeded him upon the throne of Shirpurla, was Akurgal. As yet no inscriptions of this monarch have been found. All that is known about him is gathered either from the inscriptions of his son (Eannatum) or from those of his father (Ur-Nina). In these inscriptions eight sons of Ur-Nina are mentioned. If we classify them according to their height, and take this as a basis for determining their age, we would get the following result:

It is remarkable that the first-born, Lidda, is mentioned in only one inscription. Did he never succeed his father upon the throne of Shirpurla? Did Akurgal, his fifth son, in preference to all the others, inherit the royal sceptre, and thus become the immediate successor of Ur-Nina? Interesting as these questions are, we are yet, with the means on hand, unable to decide them. This much only we know, that both Eannatum and Enannatum I, call themselves, “son of Akurgal.” Another interesting fact is that Eannatum, in his “Stèle des Vautours,” calls his father lugal (“king”) of Shirpurla, while in his other inscriptions he only terms him “patesi of Shirpurla.” Not very much can be concluded from this, because even Ur-Nina is styled by Eannatum “patesi of Shirpurla.” The translation of this latter passage, is not yet certain. Ur-Nina’s successor, however,—either Lidda or Akurgal,—may have lost the title “king” in consequence of an unsuccessful war. Eannatum, on the other hand, being more successful, resumes again for a short time the title “king” after his victory over Kish. This latter fact is very important. Eannatum expressly tells us that Innanna gave him the nam-lugal Kish-ki, “the kingship of Kish,” while as ruler of Shirpurla he was only patesi. The state of affairs then was as follows:

Ur-Nina, a usurper, was able to constitute himself king of Shirpurla in consequence of the weakness of the patesis of Shirpurla who preceded him, they having been reduced by the kings of Kish to complete powerlessness. Ur-Nina’s successors, however, were not able to retain the title of their father. Was it internal disharmony between the sons of Ur-Nina which caused this? They lost the title “king,” and had to accept that of patesi. Undoubtedly they were forced to do this by one of the successors of Mesilim, i.e. by a king of Kish. Eannatum—a great hero—was able to overcome the old enemy Kish. He even was so fortunate as to add to his old title, “patesi of Shirpurla,” that of “king” (sc. of “Kish”) and by a stretch of[354] this latter title he may have also called himself “king of Shirpurla.” The successors of Eannatum called themselves, and are called without exception “patesis of Shirpurla.”

After these preliminary remarks about the titles of the different members of the dynasty of Ur-Nina, we now turn our attention to Eannatum (i.e. “The house of heaven is stable”), the son of Akurgal himself. Whether he reigned contemporaneously with his brother Enannatum I or not, we cannot tell. The fact that the sons of Enannatum I succeeded upon the throne of Shirpurla makes it reasonable to suppose that Eannatum preceded Enannatum I. This latter ruler seems to have played only a minor rôle in early Babylonia history. Only two of his inscriptions have so far come down to us. Eannatum, his brother, on the contrary, is the greatest of the whole dynasty. The deeds of this monarch have been preserved to us on different monuments, among which the “Stèle des Vautours” is the most important. In order to obtain a full conception of his time we must compare this “Stèle” with the so-called “Cone” of Entemena. Those monuments in connection with the Galet A, give us the following interesting piece of history:

The god of Shirpurla (Ningirsu) and the god of Gishban, at the instigation of Enlil (god of Nippur), agree to settle the boundaries between their respective territories (Cone i, 1-7). Mesilim, king of Kish,—a contemporary of Lugalshuggur, patesi of Shirpurla,—in the quality of lord paramount of Shirpurla, corroborates the result of this “settling of boundaries,” and erects a statue on the junction of the two territories, to mark out the boundaries of the territory of Shirpurla on the one side and of Gishban on the other (Cone i, 8-12). Ush, however, a certain ambitious patesi of Gishban, is not satisfied with this decision. He takes away the statue which Mesilim had erected, and then invades Shirpurla, undoubtedly to extend his territory beyond the boundary previously fixed (13-21). A war between Shirpurla and Gishban ensues.

Mesilim, who feels dishonoured by this action of Ush, takes the side of Shirpurla and defeats Gishban (22-31). Gishban in course of time again becomes restless. It invades, under its patesi Gunammide, the territory of Shirpurla, and more specifically the Guedin, a district sacred to Ningirsu. “Gunammide, the patesi of Gishban, according to the command of his god … the Guedin, the beloved territory of Ningirsu he destroyed.” Eannatum, after having fortified Shirpurla sufficiently (“the wall of Uruazagga he built”), and having led his armies victoriously against Elam and Gishgal, feels himself strong enough to deal a deadly (?) blow at Gishban. “Gishban he put under the yoke, twenty of its dead ones he buried.” Having done this, he restores the sacred territory, the Guedin, to Ningirsu; concludes a treaty with Enakalli, (one of) the successor(s) of Gunammide; digs a canal “from the great river (i.e. the Euphrates?) to the Guedin,” and makes the Gishbanites swear never to invade the sacred territory of Ningirsu again, nor to trespass this boundary.

“In the future time the territory of Ningirsu, when (the Gishbanites) should invade it again, the dyke and the canal, if they should trespass it, the statue, if they should take it away—at that time when they invade it, then the sa-shush-gal (i.e. Eannatum) of Utu, the powerful king by whom they have sworn, shall rise against Gishban.”

“The Stèle des Vautours” has for its main object the commemoration of this treaty with Enakalli, patesi of Gishban, after the latter city had been defeated by Eannatum. But Eannatum was not satisfied with this; he imposes[355] a heavy tribute upon Gishban, consisting of one karu of grain for Nina and one karu for Ningirsu, besides 144,000 (?) great karu. (Cone ii, 19 ff.) After having reduced Gishban to tranquillity, Eannatum also carries his victorious weapons against Erech (Warka) and Ur (the Ur of the Chaldeans), Ki-Utu (Larsa?) and Az (on the Persian Gulf)—the patesi of which latter city he kills—against Melimme and Arua. These latter cities were all in the neighbourhood of Shirpurla. Last of all he crushes and defeats Zuzu, king of Ukh. But even this does not exhaust the record of his victories. He becomes king of Kish—Kish, which for so long had itself been sovereign over Shirpurla. How this victory was accomplished is not evident from the inscriptions so far extant. Probably at some future time we may find an account of this war.

Eannatum was not only a hero in war, but also a wise administrator. He not only renewed three suburbs of his capital, one of which—Uruazagga—he even surrounded by a wall, but also improved the condition of Shirpurla itself by digging different canals, which he consecrated to his god Ningirsu: the Kishedin, which probably marked the boundary between the Guedin and Gishban, and which the Gishbanites had to swear never to cross; the Lummagirnuntashagazaggipadda along the territory of Ningirsu; and the Lummadimshar.

Urukagina, we have seen, was the first to build a canal, viz. one for Nina, which he called Nina-ki-tum-a. In the Cone of Entemena are also mentioned the canal Lummasirta, the Imdubba, and the Namnundakiggara. Here, then, we have the beginning of the most characteristic feature of Babylonia. Babylonia becomes the “land of canals,” such as the Psalmist had in mind when he wrote that touching psalm, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept.” Further, Eannatum was not unmindful of his duty to the gods. He confesses that all that he is and that he has comes from his gods. Accordingly, he shows his gratitude by erecting sanctuaries for Enlil, Ninkharsag, Ningirsu, and Utu, and by restoring old buildings, which had been erected by his predecessors in honour of the gods, among which is to be found the Tirash.

In spite of the solemn promise of Gishban never to invade the territory of Shirpurla again, or to pass over the boundary canal, it very soon—probably at the end of the reign of Eannatum, or better, at the beginning of that of Enannatum I—becomes rebellious as before. It invades the territory of Girsu, under the leadership of a certain Urlumma, patesi of Gishban, passes over the boundary canals which Eannatum had made, removes the steles erected on those canals in honour of Ningirsu, casts them into the fire, and even destroys the sanctuaries which Eannatum had built on one of these canals (i.e. the Namnundakigarra) in honour of Enlil, Ninkharsag, Ningirsu, and Utu, and lays waste the country. Enannatum promptly arises to chastise “those dogs” who had dared to break their solemn promise. Whether this battle was decisive or not, is not evident. It seems, however, that Enannatum I gained but a slight victory over Gishban.

For Entemena, the son of Enannatum, finds it necessary to renew the war with Gishban. “He puts Urlumma under the yoke,” i.e. subdues him, forces him to return to his own country, and pursues him to the very midst of Gishban. This triumphant victory began with the decisive battle at the canal Lummasirta in the territory of Shirpurla. “Of his (i.e. Urlumma’s) army sixty men on the side of the Lummasirta he left.” On account of the severe loss Gishban fled. Entemena pursued after it, of which pursuit he records that “he left the bones of the soldiers (of Urlumma) in the field.[356]” Many of these soldiers of Gishban must have fallen, so many that Entemena was obliged “to bury their dead in five different places.”

Arrived in Gishban, Entemena makes a certain priest of Innannaab-ki (or Nin-ab-ki), Ili by name, patesi of Gishban, probably after having deposed Urlumma. As a compensation for the new dignity thus conferred, Entemena commands Ili to build in the territory of Karkar—which latter had also become rebellious—boundary canals and some other buildings. The canal which Eannatum had built “from the great river (Euphrates?) to the Guedin” Entemena prolongs to the Tigris, and also repairs the other canals, which had been destroyed more or less by the Gishbanites, and dedicates them anew to Ningirsu and Nina.

Interesting also is the subscription of this Cone:

“When the men of Gishban the boundary canal of Ningirsu and the boundary canal of Nina—for the purpose of ravaging these territories—shall pass over, then may Enlil destroy the men of Gishban and the men of the mountains; may Ningirsu bring his curse over them; may he lift up his great power; may the soldiery of his (Entemena’s) city be filled with bravery; may in the midst of the city be courage in their hearts.”

With Lummadur, the son of Enannatum II, we arrive at the last representative of the house of Ur-Nina. Nothing but his name is known to us. From the absence of the title patesi behind his name, we may conclude that Enannatum II was the last patesi of the line of Ur-Nina, and that the old enemies, Kish and Gishban, have finally succeeded in overpowering Shirpurla.

It is hardly possible to look back upon this dynasty of Ur-Nina—which, as we have seen, dates from before 4000 B.C.—without being impressed by the high civilisation, cult, the many buildings and canals, military skill, and style of writing. Surely such a people as this could not have sprung into existence as a deus ex machina; it must have had its history—a history which presupposes a development of several centuries more. We would gladly follow up the history of the successors of Lummadur, but the lack of material prevents us from so doing. Passing, therefore, over an interval of about two hundred years in the history of Shirpurla, we turn now to the enemies of the “hero Ningirsu,” i.e. Kish and Gishban (or, better, Gishukh).

KINGS OF KISH AND GISHBAN

Various changes had befallen the land of Kish. When speaking of Enshagkushanna, we saw that Kish was defeated. It had, however, in course of time again increased in strength. Mesilim was able to establish himself as ruler over Shirpurla at the time of Lugalshuggur. His successors may have retained their glory for a considerable period. They were, however, not able to withstand the mighty weapons of Eannatum. This latter king not only shook off the old yoke which Kish had fastened upon Shirpurla, but even became “king of Kish.” He must have reduced Kish to total impotence. Hence it came about that Kish was vanquished by another power, of which we shall hear shortly.

Just as Gishban, after its defeat by Eannatum, felt strong enough to disregard the solemn promise never to invade the territory of Shirpurla, so Kish, after its overthrow by Eannatum, seems to have rapidly regained its old power. For we find a certain En-ne-ugun, “king of Kish,” who is also termed “king of the hordes of Gishban,” desirous with the help of this latter city to extend the power of his capital. He was, however, defeated by a certain[357] king of a certain country (the names cannot be read on account of the mutilated condition of the tablets). “His statue”—this unknown victorious king records, while relating his victory over En-ne-ugun—“his shining silver, the utensils, his property, he carried away, and presented them to Bel at Nippur.”

In course of time, however, and probably not very long after this defeat, Kish seems to have recovered from this blow. A certain Urzaguddu must have been very successful in his wars, for, in addition to his title “king of Kish,” he calls himself also “king of …” Unfortunately here again we have a gap, so that we cannot determine of what city he became king.

Very little is known of the next king of Kish, Lugaltarsi. At what time subsequent to Urzaguddu he lived we cannot tell. So much only is certain, that he reigned some time before Alusharshid, about 3850 B.C. His inscription—the only one so far known to us—is preserved in the British Museum in which he records the building of Bad-kisal in honour of Bel and Ishtar. We can now place Manishtusu and Alusharshid also among the kings of Kish. Both flourished somewhere about 3850 B.C., before Sargon I.

When reading the inscriptions of these kings, it is as if a new race were speaking to us, so widely different is the language used by these rulers from that of their predecessors, or of any other kings we have so far met with. We here find for the first time the so-called Semitic-Babylonian inscriptions. It is the same language which is also employed in the inscriptions of Sharganisharali and his successors, in that of Lasirab, king of Guti, and of Annubanini, king of Lalubu, all of whom were more or less contemporary with these kings of Kish. Scholars who believe that we must postulate two different races among the inhabitants of early Babylonia call the kings who wrote in this style “Semitic kings,” while the others are referred to the Sumerian population. As a result of this they read the names of these kings in a Semitic way. Manishtusu becomes Ma-an-is-tu-iro (so Winckler). Urumush becomes Alu-usharshid (i.e. “He—some deity—founded the city”).

The inscription of Manishtusu, whom we place provisionally before Urumush, runs, “Manishtuirba, king of Kish, has presented (this) to Belit-Malkatu.”

Of more importance, from the historical point of view as well as from the linguistic, is the next ruler who followed soon after the former. This ruler is Alusharshid. From his inscriptions—to be found in fifty-one fragments of vases, which have been excavated by the expedition of the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Peters, and partly published by Hilprecht—we learn that he subdued Elam, on the eastern side of the Tigris, and the country of Bara’se (Para’se), from which lands he brought back these marble vases, and dedicated them to his gods at Nippur and Sippar.

For but a short period subsequent to Alusharshid does Kish seem to have enjoyed its old power. The might of Kish gave place to that of Agade, as we shall see shortly. Leaving, therefore, Kish for the present, we turn our attention to the other enemy of Old Shirpurla, viz. Gishban.

At about 4000 B.C., not long after the time of Eannatum, Gishban seems to have acquired new power and might. It directed its chief attention not so much towards Shirpurla as towards the south. Probably the rulers of Shirpurla had at this time been reduced to utter weakness by its old enemies (i.e. Kish and Gishban), of which enemies Gishban was destined to play the most important rôle in the development of ancient Babylonian history.

[358]

Lugalzaggisi, the son of Ukush, patesi of Gishban, we find at the head of the armies of Gishban, which he leads victoriously against the south. After Erech had opened its doors, the whole of Babylonia to the Persian Gulf fell an easy prey to the conquering hero. He, although originally only the son of a patesi, becomes king of Erech, nay, even king of the “whole world.” “Enlil, king of the lands, has given to Lugulzaggisi the kingship of the world; he has made him to prosper before the world; he it was that had placed the lands under his sceptre—the lands ‘from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same.’ He it also was that gave him the tribute of those lands, which he made to dwell in peace, notwithstanding that they had been brought under a new régime.” With these words Lugalzaggisi acknowledges, as the kings of Shirpurla did, that Enlil, and Enlil alone, had granted to him so unprecedented a dominion, extending from the lower sea of the Tigris and the Euphrates (i.e. the Persian Gulf) to the upper sea (i.e. the Mediterranean). Constituted thus “lord of the world,” he now becomes its “summus episcopus.” “In the sanctuaries of Kengi, as patesi of the lands, and in Erech, as high priest, they (the gods) established him.”

To quote Hilprecht: “Babylonia, as a whole, had no fault to find with this new and powerful régime. The Sumerian civilisation was directed into new channels from stagnation; the ancient cults between the lower Tigris and Euphrates began to revive and its temples to shine in new splendour.” Thus, endowed with the highest temporal and spiritual power, he “makes Erech to abound in rejoicing.” Nor does he forget the other representative cities of his domain: “Ur, like a steer, to the top of the heavens he raised.” “Over Larsa, the beloved city of Shamash, he poured out waters of joy.” His own native town and land receive chief attention: “Gishban, the beloved city of … to an unheard-of power he raised.” He, as wise ruler and statesman, not only shows his good will and favour towards the larger and more influential cities, but also protects the weaker ones: “Ki-Innanna-ab he kept in an enclosure, like a sheep that is to be shorn.”

Indeed, “Lugalzaggisi stands out from the dawn (?) of Babylonian history as a giant who deserves our full admiration for the work he accomplished.”

Seeing that Semitisms occur in almost all the earliest inscriptions so far known to us, and that the rulers themselves may have been and probably were Semites—let us confess this—then the other question arises: At what time did the Semites come into the country, so as to induce the original inhabitants to employ expressions foreign to their own language? Where did they come from? To the last question, which has been repeatedly discussed by scholars, different answers have been given. Some make Africa the original home of the Semites; others Arabia; and Hilprecht, who last spoke of this problem, assigns for this purpose Kish, or better, Kharran some distance north of Babylonia. According to his theory, Lugalzaggisi, the great conqueror from Gishban (Kharran), was the first Semite to occupy any territory in Babylonia, and thus opened the way for the Semitic population. But Lugalzaggisi does not antedate Ur-Nina. Ur-Nina is a Semite, as we have seen, consequently Semites were in the country before Lugalzaggisi.

Gishban is not Kharran, but the neighbouring state of Shirpurla; hence the Semites did not come from Kharran, but actually occupied already the whole country of Babylonia. Thus the two questions—when did the Semites invade Babylonia? and, whence did they come?—are still awaiting an[359] answer. It is possible that some tablets may give us a key to this problem, but so far these tablets have not been found.

But further, if the Semites at so early a time as 4500 B.C. (Urukagina) had possession of Babylonia and had adopted the old language of the country, which language they interspersed with their own idiom, they must have been for a long time resident in the land. This would bring the immigration of the Semites back to at least 5000 B.C. and earlier, when the Sumerian power began to decay. We must therefore push back the height of Sumerian influence to a yet more remote period.

Hence, whatever view we take in regard to the two peoples and their languages, we are led to the same general result: Civilisation and history must go back to at least 6000 B.C.

THE FIRST DYNASTY OF UR

Of Ur—the Biblical “Ur of the Chaldees”—we have already heard at the time of Eannatum. It was situated at the western side of the Euphrates, opposite the place where the Shatt-el-Khai flows into it. Up to the time of Lugalzaggisi it may not have been of very great importance. This latter ruler, however, “raised it like a steer to the top of the heaven,” hence at no long period subsequent to Lugalzaggisi we meet two kings, father and son, ruling at Ur. It is not impossible that this dynasty may itself have brought about the overthrow of Lugalzaggisi, as to whose successors we have no information. Probably, also, it took possession of the more northern part of Babylonia (Nippur), for we find that both these kings present vases to Enlil, the “lord of the lands.”

The names of these two monarchs forming the first dynasty of Ur are:

Lugalkigubnidudu, and his son (?); Lugalkisalsi.

Their dominion extended over Ur, Erech, and Nippur, probably also over Shirpurla, for the kings of the south could not have gained possession of Nippur without passing Shirpurla. This would explain why we know so very little about Shirpurla at this time. It is, however, remarkable that both these kings should call themselves first “kings of Erech,” and then “kings of Ur”; while on the other hand, Lugalkigubnidudu expressly says that Enlil added (tab) the lordship (nam-en) to the kingship (nam-lugal), which lordship so added was Erech. We would expect that, if he were originally king of Ur, the title, “king of Ur,” would come first. Here, then, we have an analogy to and a confirmation of the argument used in regard to Urzaguddu. The latter king had also two titles, viz. “king of Kish” and “king of …,” and it was argued that the latter title, “king of …,” was the original, i.e. Urzaguddu became later on “king of Kish.” So here “king of Ur” was the original title; Lugalkigubnidudu subsequently became “king of Erech.”

How long this dynasty flourished, how many rulers were comprised in it, and when and by whom it was overthrown, we cannot tell. Probably, however, it was replaced by a mighty kingdom which arose in the north (that of Agade), destined to bear sway over “the four corners of the world.”

Once more—before we leave southern Babylonia and pass over to the north—we have to direct our attention to Shirpurla. The traces which we possess of the life of Shirpurla and its patesis during this time (i.e. 4100-3800 B.C.) are but fragmentary. Only one patesi is known to us from a tablet recently published by Thureau-Dangin, in the Revue d’Assyriologie. This patesi, Lugalanda by name, cannot have lived very long after Lummadur,[360] for the writing of that tablet shows all the palæographic peculiarities of the inscriptions of Eannatum. Probably he belonged to those patesis over whom Lugalzaggisi or his successors may have ruled.

With the next two patesis, Lugalushumgal and his son (?) Ur-E, we arrive at the time of Sharganisharali [Sargon], 3800 B.C. A considerable gap in this period has still to be filled up. Let us hope that the future excavations, combined with the industry of the decipherer, will bring some light into this darkest of all periods in Old Babylonian history.

Mentioning only another patesi that belongs to this period, Ur-(dingir) Utu(?)—whose name is followed by [nam?] patesi Uru-um-ki-ma (i.e. Ur)—we pass from the south to the north of Babylonia, i.e. to the city of Agade.

KINGS OF AGADE

Agade, near the modern Abu-Habba, formed in olden times with Sippar a double city. It was situated near the Euphrates and north of Babylon. As early as 3800 B.C. Semitic kings ruled in this city, extending their sceptres over the whole of Babylonia.

The first king, as far as our knowledge goes, was Sharganisharali, cited by us as Sargon I. He was the son of a certain Itti-Bel. This latter is neither called a king nor even a patesi. In this we may see a confirmation of the so-called “legend of Sargon,” according to which this monarch was “of an inferior birth on his father’s side,” and so either a usurper or the founder of the dynasty of Agade. This legend—probably written in the eighth century B.C.—purports to be a copy of an inscription written on a statue of this great king, and bears a certain similarity to the Biblical account of Moses. It reads: “Shargena, the powerful king, the king of Agade, am I. My mother was of noble family (?) [others: was poor], my father I did not know, whereas the brother of my father inhabited the mountains. My town was Azipiranu, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother of noble family (?) (or, who was poor) conceived me and gave birth to me secretly. She put me into a basket of shurru (reeds?), and shut up the mouth (?) of it (?) with bitumen; she cast me into the river, which did not overwhelm (?) me. The river carried me away and brought me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me up in … Akki, the drawer of water, reared me to boyhood. Akki, the drawer of water, made me a gardener. During my activity as gardener, Ishtar loved me. X + IV years I exercised dominion, … years I commanded the black-headed people (i.e. the Semites) and ruled them,” etc. The rest of this legend tells us something about his campaign against Dur-ilu on the borders of Elam; it is, however, too fragmentary to be coherent.

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In connection with this legend we would call the attention of the reader once more to the fact that not merely the identity of this Shargena with our Sharganisharali, his deeds and warlike expeditions recorded in the so-called “Tablet of Omens,” with the date of his rule, have been doubted, but even his very existence. A series of new facts connected with the time of Naram-Sin and Sharganisharali have since come to light by the publication of a great number of contract-tablets written during the reign of these kings. These tablets are to be found in Revue d’Assyriologie, iv, No. iii. Hence it is now impossible to doubt the historicity of Sharganisharali, as was done by Niebuhr.

Down to the time of Hilprecht’s publication of Old Babylonian Inscriptions, Part I, our knowledge of Sargon I was almost entirely drawn from the “legend” and the “Tablet of Omens.” Hence it happened that the great deeds which were attributed to Sargon and Naram-Sin in the “Tablet of Omens” were said to be “purely legendary” (so by Winckler, Geschichte Babylon. und Assyr., p. 38). Others thought that his deeds had been simply projected backwards (so Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, New York, 1895, p. 599; “Sargon II is he who projected backward”); others again, not believing that Sargon I could have undertaken such expeditions and have become practically the “king of the four corners of the earth,” invented another king Sargon (so Hommel, Gesch. Baby. und Assyr., Berlin, 1883, p. 307, note 4; this Sargon he places at about 2000 B.C.).

Thanks to the excavations at Telloh and the industry of Thureau-Dangin, we are now in a position to prove that the statements of the “Tablet of Omens” are correct in almost every particular.

Let us hear what this “Tablet of Omens” has to say. Eleven of these “omens” are ascribed to Sargon and two to Naram-Sin. They generally begin with the phrase: “When the moon was in such and such position,” then Sargon, etc.

The first omen records Sargon’s expedition to and subjection of Elam.

The second tells how he marched to the land Akharri (i.e. the West-land), and subjected it, and that his army subjugated the kibrati irbitta, i.e. “the four corners of the world.”

The third tells us that he brought sorrow upon Kish and Babylon, and built a city after the pattern (?) of Agade, and called it Ub-da-ki, i.e. “place (city) of the world.”

The fourth records another expedition against the West and the taking possession of the four corners of the earth. So also the fifth omen.

The sixth omen is too fragmentary to yield any certain sense.

The seventh gives us a fuller account of the expedition against Akharri; he crosses the sea of the West and wages war against it for three years, takes it, erects there his statues, and transports the prisoners, whom he had taken, over land and sea.

The eighth describes the repairing of one of his palaces, which he calls “E-ki-a-am i-ni-lik,” i.e. “the house”: “so let us walk.”

In the next we hear of a campaign against a certain Kashtubilla of Kasalla, who had revolted. Sargon goes against him, conquers him and his army, and destroys the rebellious country.

The tenth probably is one of the most important. It reads: “Sargon, against whom under this omen the elders of the whole country had revolted, and in Agade had shut him up—Sargon went out, conquered them, and cast them down, subdued their army, and.…”

The last omen tells us something about Sargon’s campaign against the[362] land Suri, how he overcame it, and took it, and how he destroyed its army.

The two omens relating to Naram-Sin record a campaign against Apirak (Omen i) and against Magan (Omen ii). In both expeditions Naram-Sin was so successful, that he even took captive the kings of these countries, viz.: Resh-Ramman (Adad), king of Apirak, and N. N. king of Magan.

According to this “Tablet of Omens,” then Sargon I subdued Elam, the “West-land,” brought woe upon Babylon and Kish, conquered the country Kasalla, suppressed a revolt which had arisen against him while on his expeditions, and finally subdued the land Suri “in its totality.”b

Sargon’s son and successor, Naram-Sin, followed up the successes of his father by marching into Magan, whose king he took captive. He assumed the imperial title of “king of the four zones,” and, like his father, was addressed as a “god.” He is even called “the god of Agade” (Accad), reminding us of the divine honours claimed by the Pharaohs of Egypt, whose territory now adjoined that of Babylonia. A finely executed bas-relief, representing Naram-Sin, and bearing a striking resemblance to early Egyptian art in many of its features, has been found at Diarbekir. Babylonian art, however, had already attained a high degree of excellence; two seal cylinders of the time of Sargon are among the most beautiful specimens of the gem-cutter’s art ever discovered. The empire was bound together by roads, along which there was a regular postal service, and clay seals, which took the place of stamps, are now in the Louvre bearing the names of Sargon and his son. A cadastral survey seems also to have been instituted, and one of the documents relating to it states that a certain Uru-Malik, whose name appears to indicate his Canaanitish origin, was governor of the land of the Amorites, as Syria and Palestine were called by the Babylonians. It is probable that the first collection of astronomical observations and terrestrial omens was made for a library established by Sargon.

Bingani-shar-ali was the son of Naram-Sin, but we do not yet know whether he followed his father on the throne. Another son was high priest of the city of Tutu, and in the name of his daughter, Lipus-Eaum, a priestess of Sin, some scholars have seen that of the Hebrew deity, Yahveh. The Babylonian god, Ea, however, is more likely to be meant.

THE KINGS OF UR

The fall of Sargon’s empire seems to have been as sudden as its rise. The seat of supreme power in Babylonia was shifted southward to Erech, Isin, and Ur. At least three dynasties appear to have reigned at Ur and claimed suzerainty over the other Babylonian states. One of these, under Gungunu, succeeded in transferring the capital of Babylonia from Isin to Ur. It is still uncertain whether Gungunu belonged to the second or third dynasty of Ur; if to the second, among his successors would have been Ur-Gur, a great builder, who built or restored the temples of the Moon-god at Ur, of the Sun-god at Larsa, of Ishtar at Erech, and of Bel at Nippur. His son and successor was Dungi II, one of whose vassals was Gudea the patesi or high priest of Lagash [Shirpurla]. Gudea was also a great builder, and the materials for his buildings and statues were brought from all parts of western Asia, cedar wood from the Amanus Mountains, quarried stones from Lebanon, copper from northern Arabia, gold and precious stones from the desert between Palestine and Egypt, dolerite from Magan (the Sinaitic peninsula), and timber from Dilmun in the Persian Gulf. Some of his[363] statues, now in the Louvre, are carved out of Sinaitic dolerite, and on the lap of one of them is the plan of his palace, with the scale of measurement attached. Six of the statues bore special names, and offerings were made to them as to the statues of the gods. Gudea claims to have conquered Anshan in Elam, and was succeeded by his son, Ur-Ningirsu. His date may be provisionally fixed at 2700 B.C.

The high priests of Lagash still owned allegiance to Ur, when the last dynasty of Ur was dominant in Babylonia. The dynasty was Semitic, not Sumerian, though one of its kings was Dungi II. He was followed by Bur-Sin II, Gimil-Sin, and Ine-Sin, whose power extended to the Mediterranean, and of whose reigns we possess a large number of contemporaneous monuments in the shape of contracts and similar business documents, as well as chronological tables. After the fall of the dynasty, Babylonia passed under foreign influence.

ACCESSION OF A SOUTH ARABIAN DYNASTY

Sumu-abi (“Shem is my father”), from southern Arabia (or perhaps Canaan), made himself master of northern Babylonia, while Elamite invaders occupied the South. After a reign of fourteen years, Sumu-abi was succeeded by his son, Sumu-la-ilu, in the fifth year of whose reign the fortress of Babylon was built, and the city became for the first time a capital. Rival kings, Pungun-ila and Immeru, are mentioned in the contract tablets as reigning at the same time as Sumu-la-ilu (or Samu-la-ilu); and under Sin-muballit, the great-grandson of Sumu-la-ilu, the Elamites laid the whole of the country under tribute, and made Eri-Aku, or Arioch, called Rim-Sin by his Semitic subjects, king of Larsa. Eri-Aku was the son of Kudur-Mabuk, who was prince of Yamudbal [or E-mutbal], on the eastern border of Babylonia, and also “governor of Syria.”

The Elamite supremacy was at last shaken off by the son and successor of Sin-muballit, Khammurabi, whose name is also written Ammurapi and Khammuram, and who was the Amraphel of Genesis xiv. 1. The Elamites, under their king, Kudur-Lagamar or Chedorlaomer, seem to have taken Babylon and destroyed the temple of Bel-Merodach; but Khammurabi retrieved his fortunes, and in the thirtieth year of his reign (in 2340 B.C.), he overthrew the Elamite forces in a decisive battle and drove them out of Babylonia. The next two years were occupied in adding Larsa and Yamudbal to his dominion, and in forming Babylonia into a single monarchy, the head of which was Babylon.

A great literary revival followed the recovery of Babylonian independence, and the rule of Babylon was obeyed as far as the shores of the Mediterranean. Vast numbers of contract tablets, dated in the reigns of Khammurabi and other kings of the dynasty, have been discovered, as well as autograph letters of the kings themselves, more especially of Khammurabi. Among the latter is one ordering the despatch of two hundred and forty soldiers from Assyria and Situllum, a proof that Assyria was at the time a Babylonian dependency. Constant intercourse was kept up between Babylonia and the West, Babylonian officials and troops passing to Syria and Canaan, while “Amorite” colonists were established in Babylonia for the purposes of trade. One of these Amorites, Abi-ramu or Abram by name, is the father of a witness to a deed dated in the reign of Khammurabi’s grandfather. Ammi-satana, the great-grandson of Khammurabi, still entitles himself “king of the land of the Amorites,” and both his father and[364] son bear the Canaanitish (and South Arabian) names of Abesukh or Abishua [Ebishum], and Ammi-zadok [or Ammi-sadugga].

Samsu-satana, the son of Ammi-zadok, was the last king of the first dynasty of Babylon, which was followed by a dynasty of eleven Sumerian kings for 368 years. We know but little of them; their capital has not yet been discovered, and no trading documents dated in their reigns have been found. They were overthrown and Babylonia was conquered by Kassites or Kossæans from the mountains of Elam, under Kandish [Gandish] or Gaddas (in 1800 B.C.), who established a dynasty which lasted for 576 years and nine months.

THE KASSITE DYNASTY

Under this foreign domination, Babylonia lost its empire over western Asia. Syria and Palestine became independent, and the high priests of Asshur made themselves kings of Assyria. The divine attributes with which the Semitic kings of Babylonia had been invested disappeared at the same time; the title of “god” is never given to a Kassite sovereign. Babylon, however, remained the capital of the kingdom and the holy city of western Asia. Like the sovereigns of the Holy Roman Empire, it was necessary for the prince, who claimed rule in western Asia, to go to Babylon and there be acknowledged as the adopted son of Bel before his claim to legitimacy could be admitted. Babylon became more and more a priestly city, living on its ancient prestige and merging its ruler into a pontiff. From henceforth, down to the Persian era, it was the religious head of the civilised East.

One of the earlier Kassite kings was Agum-kakrime, who recovered the images of Merodach and his consort, which had been carried away to Khani. At a later date Kadashman-Bel and Burna-buriash I corresponded with the Egyptian Pharaohs, Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV (1400 B.C.). The Assyrian king Asshur-uballit still owned allegiance to his Babylonian suzerain, and intermarriages took place between the royal families of Assyria and Babylonia. Babylonia, moreover, still sought opportunities of recovering its old supremacy in Palestine, which the conquests of the XVIIIth Dynasty had made an Egyptian province, and along with Mitanni or Aram-Naharain and the Hittites intrigued against the Egyptian government with disaffected conspirators in the West. After the death of Burna-buriash, however, civil war in Babylonia led to Assyrian interference in the affairs of the country, and from this time forward even the nominal obedience of Assyria to its old suzerain was at an end.

ASSYRIAN CONQUEST OF BABYLON

Frequent wars broke out between the two nations, and eventually (about 1280 B.C.) Tukulti-Ninib of Assyria, in the fifth year of his reign, captured Babylon and sent the treasures of E-sagila, the temple of Bel-Merodach, to Asshur. For seven years the Assyrian monarch reigned over Babylonia, then a revolt obliged him to retire; Adad-shum-usur of the native dynasty was placed on the Babylonian throne; and Tukulti-Ninib was shortly afterwards murdered by his son, Asshurnazirpal I. Assyria steadily increased in power, while Babylonia fell more and more into decay. Shalmaneser I, the builder of Calah (now Nimrud) in 1300 B.C., carried his victorious arms in all directions, and Tiglathpileser I extended the Assyrian Empire as far as the Mediterranean (1100 B.C.).

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The Kassite Dynasty had fallen about 1230 B.C., in consequence of an attack on the part of the Elamites, and a new dynasty which sprang from Isin took its place, and lasted for 132½ years. Then came a series of short-lived dynasties, ending with that of Nabu-nasir, the Nabonassar of classical writers, who ascended the throne of Babylon in 747 B.C. Assyria was at the time in the throes of a revolution. Civil war and pestilence were devastating the kingdom, and its northern provinces had been wrested from it by Ararat (or Van) [Urartu]. In 746 B.C. Calah rebelled, and on the thirteenth of Airu (April), in the following year, Pulu or Pul, who took the name of Tiglathpileser III, seized the throne, and inaugurated a new and vigorous policy.c

At this point it seems well to interrupt the story of Babylonia for a time until we have traced the origins and rise of that Assyrian power in which the fortunes of Babylon were soon involved and subordinated until the destruction of Nineveh, when the New Babylonian Empire emerged into historic prominence.a

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER III. THE RISE OF ASSYRIA

The Assyrian Empire is in some respects unique in history. Despite the proverbial tendency of history to repeat itself, there has been no duplication of the tragic history of this wonderful body politic. It rose to be the most powerful of nations; it reached out and gained the widest empire that had hitherto been seen; its capital, Nineveh, was for a few centuries the metropolis of the world. But in the very fulness of its imperial flight it was struck down and utterly destroyed.

Other empires have been subjugated; Nineveh was annihilated. The very name “Assyrian” became only a memory and a tradition. Late in the seventh century B.C. Nineveh was the boasted mistress of the world; two centuries later the mounds that covered her ruins were noted by the Greek historian Xenophon, who marched past them with the ill-fated Ten Thousand, merely as the relics of some ancient city of unknown name. So brief may be the highest fame! Yet the sequel is stranger still. As we have seen, these forgotten mounds treasured secrets of history which they have since given up to the explorer, and our own generation has seen Assyria restored to its place in history. The details of its career are more fully known to us than those of almost any other nation of antiquity. Such a phœnix-like regeneration is a fitting sequel to the fantastic career with its tragic dénouement, which is about to claim our attention.

It must not be supposed that the Assyrian Empire came suddenly to the height of power just suggested. On the contrary, its rise was slow, and[367] accomplished by intermittent impulses. Naturally enough, the growing nation has left us no such exhaustive records of its history during earlier days as have come to us from its time of might. Indeed, for some centuries after Assyria began to assume importance, we have but fragmentary records of its history. Only here and there a great monarch puts the stamp of his achievements upon an epoch so indelibly that time itself cannot wipe it out. Such names as Sargon II, Shalmaneser, and Tiglathpileser were remembered by posterity as the names of great heroes whose deeds various successors strove to emulate, and whose names were taken up, sometimes by usurpers of the throne, sometimes by legitimate descendants of royalty, and thus doubly perpetuated.

It is not till we are well within the last thousand years of the pre-Christian era, however, that the monarchs of Assyria come to be so well known to us as to seem like true historic personages in the same sense in which these terms would be applied to the Alexanders and Cæsars of a later period. Such kings as Sargon II, Asshurnazirpal, Tiglathpileser III, Shalmaneser II and a little later, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Asshurbanapal, left records so voluminous and so perfectly authenticated as to bring their authors into the clearest light of history. Nowhere else outside of Egypt have such full records been preserved of the deeds of ancient monarchs as in the case of these Assyrian kings. Naturally enough, the record ceases before the destruction of Nineveh; there was no Assyrian scribe left to tell of that tragic event.

But now the scene shifts to Babylon; the kings of that principality take up the broken record, and for a few generations supply us with historical documents of the utmost importance. And where the Babylonian records end, the Persian chronicles begin. These are supplemented in due course by the reports of the Grecian historians, beginning with Herodotus, so that the historical sequence is practically unbroken.

We have seen that these Assyrian and Babylonian records were quite unknown throughout later classical times, and from then on until restored late in the nineteenth century. A peculiar interest, then, attaches to the comparison of these records with the traditions of Babylonian and Assyrian heroes which the classical writers have preserved. In general, it can hardly be said that the comparison is flattering to the classical mind. No Assyrian tablet tells us of any such person as Ninus, the alleged founder of Nineveh. Nor is there any royal cylinder that tells of the mighty conquests of Queen Semiramis. There is, indeed, a queen of that name mentioned, but she is the consort of a late king of Nineveh, and there is nothing recorded to suggest that her achievements were in any respect noteworthy. We are forced to conclude, then, that the Greek historians, in recording the alleged history of Assyria, depended upon verbal traditions. They appear to have been altogether ignorant of the contents of the authentic historical documents, many of which were still accessible in the libraries of Babylonia when Herodotus visited that city. It is interesting to note, however, that the Greeks had a vivid realisation of the sometime greatness of Assyria, even though they were unable to form a clear and correct image of the picture. Semiramis was really an idealised impersonation of the general conception of the Assyrian conqueror. Sargon, Tiglathpileser, and their successors were forgotten in name, but their deeds were vaguely remembered, and out of the reminiscences of their actual conquests arose the conception of a mythical ruler, whose name was destined for centuries to supplant the names of actual heroes. What happened here is but a repetition of what has happened elsewhere[368] under similar conditions. There is no myth without its background of fact. Had there never been great conquerors ruling over Assyria, there would never have arisen the legend of Semiramis. That “there is no smoke without some fire” is a maxim which the historian should never overlook; it is a maxim to which the story of Assyrian history gives peculiar emphasis.

So much has been said about the sources of Assyrian history that only a word need be added here. We shall have occasion as we proceed, to call attention in greater detail to the specific records of various kings. In addition to these, however, there are certain historical documents of a more general character, which have been largely instrumental in enabling the modern investigator to reconstruct Babylonian and Assyrian history. The most important of these are certain Babylonian king-lists and a so-called Synchronistic History, in which the succession of rulers in Babylonia and in Assyria is synchronised. These chronological documents taken together do not enable us fully to reconstruct the history of the long periods in question, but the gaps are relatively insignificant, in particular after about the year 1000 B.C.; and for the later monarchs of Assyria the records are often so voluminous as to furnish accurate details regarding all the events of importance.

It has already been pointed out that the earliest history of Assyria is no less obscure than that of early Babylonia. As nearly as the facts can now be restored to us, it would appear that for some centuries the people to the north of Babylonia were struggling for supremacy against the older civilisation of the South. Gradually the northerners—the Assyrians, as they became known—gained in strength until, finally, about the beginning of the fourteenth century B.C., under Shalmaneser I, Asshur obtained a position at least equal to Babylonia. After the death of this monarch Assyria seems to have weakened for a time, and it is not until about 1100 B.C. that another great monarch appeared to put the stamp of his personality upon the epoch. This new ruler was known as Tiglathpileser I. He has been called the first of the great Assyrian conquerors, though perhaps this estimate does scant justice to certain of his predecessors. In any event, he restored the influence of Assyria, subjugated Babylonia, and is said to have been the first Assyrian ruler to be crowned as “King of the Four Corners of the Earth.” It is believed that Nineveh was established as the capital of the empire in the reign of the son and successor of Tiglathpileser, who bore the unfamiliar name of Asshur-bel-kala.

It is curious how largely the personality of an individual monarch dominates the history of an epoch among oriental nations. An illustration of this familiar fact is shown by antithesis in the scantiness of the records for about a century after the death of Tiglathpileser. Imperfect records[369] reappear about 950 B.C., but it is not till about three-quarters of a century later that Assyria rises again to a time of might. Then, under Asshurnazirpal, one of the most enterprising and most cruel of conquerors, the stamp of Assyrian influence was put upon all surrounding nations. Shalmaneser II largely sustained the traditions of his father, and the power of Assyria was upheld, if not extended, by the next rulers, Tiglathpileser III and Shalmaneser IV.

How fully the deeds of these later Assyrian monarchs are known to us will appear in the succeeding pages. Monarchs of even greater celebrity were to come after; yet perhaps the reign of Asshurnazirpal (885-860 B.C.) may not unjustly be regarded as the period when Assyria obtained its greatest power and its highest civilisation. The bas-reliefs from the palace of Asshurnazirpal, which were exhumed by Layard and which are now exhibited in the British Museum, are in some respects the most perfect examples of Assyrian art that have been preserved. It is true that the artists of two centuries later had developed a more elaborate fashion in the matter of details; but the rugged outlines of the earlier masters tell of art in its creative period. The models produced in this epoch were never to be altered in their essentials during the entire course of Assyrian history. Such hunting scenes as that in which Asshurnazirpal, standing in his chariot, is seen shooting an arrow at an enraged and wounded lion, were perhaps never quite equalled by any Assyrian artist of a later epoch. The art of this time shows examples also of massive sculptures, such as the human-headed bulls and lions, in relative abundance. A curious feature of the later sculptures is that they usually present inscriptions written across pedestal and figure alike. Needless to say, these inscriptions record deeds of the great conqueror. Unfortunately, many of them are repetitions, but even so they preserve relatively comprehensive records of the achievements of the great king.

Even fuller records are preserved of Shalmaneser II. In particular, the black obelisk on which the deeds of this king are presented, both in graphic pictures and in extensive inscriptions, is one of the most famous of Assyrian antiquities. The exact character of this inscription and of the other records in question will be detailed in the succeeding pages.a Before proceeding to the history proper, let us study the theatre where the drama was played and the origins of the actors.

LAND AND PEOPLE

The land of Assyria, in the more restricted sense of the term, lies for the most part on the left bank of the Tigris, and is bounded on the south by the Lower Zab. Hence, strictly speaking, it would not form part of Mesopotamia were it not that the capital importance of the Tigris to the country and the trend of its other rivers make it a kind of appendage to the alluvial plain, and that the mountain ranges of the North constitute a boundary which cuts it off from the rest of the world, and thus naturally assigns it to Mesopotamia. Consequently, as soon as the Assyrians gained their independence and started on a career of conquest, it was natural that they should first extend their borders in that direction.

Mesopotamia consists of a great low-lying plain divided by no physical barrier. It was natural, therefore, that the policy of all powerful rulers in that region should have had for its aim the political unification of all parts of the country, united as they were already by a common civilisation and[370] economic interdependence. The efforts of the Assyrians were likewise directed towards this end, though it was long before they obtained it. In the kingdom of Babylonia, which asserted its sway over the whole southern portion of the plain and its dependent provinces, they were at first confronted by an adversary strong enough to resist them, and all that fell to them for the time being was the northern half of Mesopotamia, the greater part of which remained under their dominion, and was merged into an Assyrian empire, just as the whole of Babylonia had been merged into a Babylonian empire. We shall see, however, that the memory of the separate existence of the two component parts of the empire at an earlier stage still subsisted in certain customs and relics of civil law, just as it did in Babylonia.

The Assyrians were a Semitic race, and, but for slight differences of dialect, spoke the same language as the Semitic-Babylonians. The Assyrian branch of the race constituted, in the first instance, an outpost on the left bank of the Tigris, where it developed on somewhat different lines from the Semites who remained in Mesopotamia. We have every reason for assuming that, before the Assyrians made their way into the country, the whole of Mesopotamia, the north no less than the south, was occupied by a Semitic population, distinct from the Aramæans—themselves probably recent immigrants—and united by a common civilisation. This is the race which we have styled Babylonians, as distinguished from the Sumerians, or, more exactly, Semitic-Babylonians, in treating of Babylonia. We are absolutely in the dark as to the extent to which these Semites of the North may have absorbed elements of an elder Sumerian population that may have survived, for in the earliest times concerning which we have any historic testimony the Semites were predominant even in northern Babylonia, much more, therefore, in northern Mesopotamia.

The Assyrians must have developed on independent lines, for in all other respects they differ materially from the Babylonians. In the latter we have made the acquaintance of a people peaceably disposed, nay, actually unwarlike, concerned mainly with the development of their civilisation—qualities which, when we compare them with the Assyrians, we are inclined to set to the account of their Sumerian blood. The latter were probably the most warlike of all the Semitic nations of the East, and maintained the purity of their racial type; for the features of the figures in their sculptures exhibit to a marked degree the characteristics which strike us nowadays as peculiar to the Jewish race. They also differ from the Babylonians in figure, for the latter are usually represented as short and thick-set, while the Assyrians are of somewhat lofty stature and powerful build.

The land of Assyria is very different from Mesopotamia proper. The nearness of the mountain ranges makes the climate cooler, and the soil is probably less productive than that of the lowlands along the river. Nor were the means of transport within its borders as good as in Mesopotamia proper, for the Tigris only constituted the frontier, and the swiftness of its current made it less well adapted for traffic than the Euphrates, which formed the most convenient natural line of communication in the plain of Mesopotamia.

In Babylonia we made the acquaintance of a country which had developed its own civilisation, and one where the inhabitants held in proud and honourable remembrance the various stages of its economic and political development,—a sentiment reflected in the religious cults of the ancient cities, the centres of civilisation. With Assyria it is otherwise. That[371] country began to play its part in Mesopotamian history with the set purpose of appropriating what Babylonia had achieved. The Assyrians had no such gains, hallowed by the associations of thousands of years to boast of in their own country. They were a tardy supplement to the Semitic immigration. They felt themselves an appendage to the Semitic population already settled in Mesopotamia, and consequently regarded its ancient cults as, in a measure, their own. The fact implies an unconscious confession that they had nothing analogous or equivalent to set against the old centres of Babylonian civilisation, and, as a matter of fact, the chief towns of Assyria cannot for a moment be compared in importance with those of Babylonia. The most famous of the former owed their day of splendour to the rise of the Assyrian Empire or even, to some extent, to the fancy of individual kings; and when the Assyrian Empire passed from the stage of history these, its artificial creations, were abolished with it.

Babylonia rose again after every fresh blow, because her rise to the position she held had its root in a vital need of the peoples of anterior Asia; while soon after the fall of the Assyrian Empire the very names of the great cities of Assyria had passed from the memory of the dwellers in the land. The case is different with the cities of northern Mesopotamia, which belonged to the Assyrian Empire, but existed before its rise, and survived its fall. The only other exception among the large Assyrian cities is Arbela, which, being situate at the junction of the trade routes to northern Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Media, had probably been in existence before the time of the Assyrian Empire, and likewise retained its importance to a later period.

ASSYRIAN CAPITALS: ASSHUR AND NINEVEH

The oldest capital of Assyria was Asshur, situated on the right bank of the Tigris, on the site of the present Kalah Sherghat. It was originally the seat of rulers called patesis, who were probably subjects of the Babylonian monarchy. In the first half of the second millennium B.C. these rulers extended their sway over the district which they styled “the land of the city of Asshur,” and assumed the title of “king.” Asshur was always held in honour as the ancient capital, but it lay so far to the south (being, in fact, almost beyond the borders of the country), that it soon became imperative for the “kings of Assyria” to transfer the centre of government to a more convenient place. Shalmaneser I (circa 1300) accordingly chose Calah for his residence. The natural result was the decline of the importance of Asshur, since its situation was not such as to assure it a leading position. In later times it subsisted mainly upon its old reputation, and enjoyed special privileges, which were confirmed even by Sargon. It was the seat of Asshur, the chief national divinity. The kings of Assyria, from Shalmaneser I to Sargon, held their court at Calah (Nimrud). Its consequence seems to have declined after the reign of Tiglathpileser I, for his son, Asshur-bel-kala removed to Nineveh, which remained the royal residence till the reign of Asshurnazirpal. The latter rebuilt Calah and so improved it that it remained the capital until Sargon chose Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), which in turn Nineveh replaced as capital.

Nineveh (Ninua), situated above Calah, on the left bank of the Tigris, and opposite the present town of Mosul, is now represented by the two mounds of Kuyunjik and Neby-Yunus. It was one of the oldest and most important cities of the province of Assyria, and was highly esteemed from the very earliest times of the Assyrian Empire as being the seat of a cult of[372] an Ishtar known as “Ishtar of Ninua,” to distinguish her from the Ishtar of Arbela. We must therefore look upon it as a city which originally stood on an equal footing with Asshur, and was subjugated by the patesi of the latter city. It became the royal residence in the reign of Asshur-bel-kala, the son of Tiglathpileser (or even earlier), and remained so until the reign of Asshurnazirpal. But it really owed its fame as the capital and chief city of Assyria, which it represented in the eyes of other nations, to Sennacherib. He built an entirely new Nineveh, which was to show forth worthily the power and glory of the Assyrian Empire. His successors continued to reside there, and contributed to its splendour. Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal built palaces there, and Nineveh formed the last bulwark of the Assyrian Empire.

In the Euphrates Valley, and mainly on the right bank, between the bank where the river turns towards the southwest and Babylonia, various states had come into being which, by the force of their natural connection with Babylonia, inclined towards that kingdom rather than towards Assyria and northern Mesopotamia. There are Laqi, Khindanu, and (east of the latter) Sukhi, or Shuhi, which last extended from somewhere near the mouth of the Khabur to Babylonia, and was under Babylonian ascendency down to a late period. These states had probably in the first instance been dependencies of the Babylonian Empire, but had enjoyed virtual independence from the time of the fall of Babylonia and the rise of Assyria. Asshurnazirpal was the first to subjugate these “governors,” who, up to this time, had “paid no tribute” to the Assyrian kings, and who were supported by Babylonia in their struggle with Assyria. The population of these states was composed of the same elements as that of Mesopotamia. The original Semitic-Babylonian settlers had been ousted by Aramæan immigrants. This was most evident in Laqi, the westernmost, which was not a homogeneous body politic in the reign of Asshurnazirpal, but was governed by various sheikhs. And, generally speaking, these states were semi-nomadic commonwealths.

THE RISE OF ASSYRIA

The city of Asshur was originally a patesi-ship. The situation of Asshur seems to point to a close connection with Babylonia rather than with northern Mesopotamia, and for the present, at least, it seems most likely that we ought to regard it as a vassal state to Babylonia or the Kingdom of the Four Quarters of the World. Nor must we ignore the possibility that it may have formed part of the realm of the “Kishshati.”

A record left by an Assyrian king enables us to determine one point of time, at least, when Asshur was still a dependency and ruled by a patesi. Tiglathpileser I built that part of the great temple of Asshur which was intended for the worship of the gods Anu and Ramman (Adad), and in the record he has left he observes that this temple was built by the patesi Shamshi-Adad, the son of Ishme-Dagan, patesi of Asshur, six hundred and forty-one years before the reign of his own great-grandfather Asshur-dan, sixty years earlier. Accordingly Asshur must have been ruled by patesis sixty plus six hundred and forty-one years before 1100, when Tiglathpileser was on the throne, and its exaltation to the rank of a kingdom must have taken place later than that. The names of two patesis of Asshur and those of their fathers are known to us from inscriptions of their own. One of them, Shamshi-Adad, and his father, Igur-Kapkapu, we may place before or after Shamshi, the son of Ishme-Dagan, with equal[373] probability, while the form of the other two names, Irishum and his father Khallu, being simple and exhibiting nothing of the compound character of later Assyrian names, leads us to conjecture that they belong to an earlier period.

The names of these six patesis and their work in the building of the temple of Asshur represent our whole stock of knowledge concerning Asshur before it rose to be a royal city. The first king of Assyria of whom we know anything is Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, who is introduced to us by the Synchronistic History as a contemporary of the Kossæan[22] king Karaindash of Babylon. As this monarch reigned some time about the first half of the fifteenth century B.C., there is an interval of over three hundred years between him and the patesi Shamshi-Adad, an interval of which we know nothing except that the rise of Asshur and the establishment of the kingdom of Assyria must fall within it. Of the circumstances and conditions under which these events took place we know nothing in detail, but an explanation naturally suggests itself from the state of Babylonia. During this same period Babylonia had sunk to such a depth of decrepitude that her own strength was no longer adequate to secure her against hordes of invaders, and she could continue to exist only under the protection of the Kossæan kings and their armies. These disorders, which inevitably attend such a state of things, served, as they invariably do in the East, to promote the formation of new states under energetic and enterprising leaders, and to these circumstances the kingdom of Asshur probably owed its rise.

From the reign of Shalmaneser I (circa 1300) onwards the kings of Assyria bear the title of “Shar Kishshati” and even place it before that of “King of Asshur.” “Shar Kishshati” means “King of the World,” and the title is thus formed in the same fashion as the Babylonian “King of the Four Quarters of the World.” And the Assyrian title, like the Babylonian, was not merely general in scope, but was bound up with the possession of a particular district and particular cities.

It is doubtful whether Assyria subdued the kingdom of the Kishshati from the outset, or gained possession of it at a later period. According to the scanty records at present open to us, the latter hypothesis seems the more probable. The first Assyrian king to bear the title of “Shar Kishshati” is Shalmaneser I (about 1300), and he gives it to his father, Adad-nirari I (or Ramman-nirari), although the latter does not assume it in his own inscription. Shalmaneser attaches so much weight to this title that on a couple of bricks, which date from his reign, he actually styles himself “King of Kishshati” alone, and omits the royal title of Assyria; and we therefore may conclude that the union of northern Mesopotamia and Assyria was the work of Adad-nirari and of Shalmaneser.

This would be at least one fixed point in the earliest history of Assyria from which to trace the development of the empire. Before Shalmaneser we have to do only with the little kingdom of Asshur, which was chiefly engaged in struggles with Babylonia and its eastern neighbours, and after his time with the united dominions of Assyria and northern Mesopotamia, the leading power of Mesopotamian civilisation against the West and the attacks of barbarians on every side. The Synchronistic History is our principal guide to Assyrian history, as it was to the history of Babylonia before it came into touch with Assyria. We have but few inscriptions of the kings of this early stage of Assyria’s existence, and only by the aid[374] of the above-mentioned document can we more or less connectedly trace the course of history. Before the reign of Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, at which the chronicle now begins, we can be sure of nothing but a great blank.

With Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, who reigned in the first half of the fifteenth century, begins a line of kings with a certain degree of continuity. Of himself we only know what is told in the Synchronistic History, namely, that he concluded an alliance with Karaindash of Babylon by which they guaranteed one another in possession of their dominions. He was presently—though perhaps not immediately—succeeded by Puzur-Asshur [probably about 1420 B.C.] of whom we are told the same thing. He entered into friendly alliance with Burna-buriash.

Of his supposed successor, Asshur-nadin-akhe, we know, from the letters of his son Asshur-uballit to Amenhotep IV, that he, like his Babylonian contemporary, held communication with the kings of Egypt. In an inscription of a later king mention is made of a building of his, the foundation of a palace at Asshur. For the rest, it is by no means impossible that he may have reigned before Puzur-Asshur, and that the latter, as well as Asshur-uballit, was his son.

We possess a letter written by Asshur-uballit to Amenhotep IV of Egypt. It gives an account of presents made to the king of Egypt—a war chariot yoked to two white horses, and a seal cylinder—makes excuse for the tardy return of Egyptian ambassadors on the plea that they had been stopped by the (nomadic) Sutu, and contains the usual importunate requests for richer presents in return. In Babylonia, Asshur-uballit succeeded in making a way for Assyrian interference, and thus came a step nearer to the goal all kings of Assyria longed to reach, the suzerainty of Babylon. Apart from the attempt of Asshur-narara and Nabu-daian, which presumably came to nothing, the little kingdom of Assyria had been on friendly terms with Babylonia, and had made alliance which probably contributed more to her own security than that of the other party. Internal troubles were the pretext which first rendered feasible his successful interference in Babylonian affairs.

The assassination of the Babylonian king by the malcontent Kossæans, and the elevation of Nazibugash to the throne, gave Asshur-uballit an admirable pretext for restoring “order” in Babylonia and placing Kurigalzu, his other grandson, on the throne. Adad-nirari mentions another expedition of his against the Shubari. His successor, Bel-nirari I [about 1370 B.C.], boasts in his inscription that he conquered the Kasshu (Kossæans) and enlarged the borders of the land. This probably refers to a distinct campaign against the Kasshu, and not to the war with Kurigalzu II, in which he was likewise victorious. The latter enterprise also resulted in territorial expansion, which does not necessarily seem to have been made permanent.

Pudi-ilu (about 1350), the son and successor of Bel-nirari, waged war, we are told by his son, Adad-nirari, against the otherwise unknown Turuki and Nigimkhi, who probably dwelt somewhere in the direction of Armenia, and extended the Assyrian frontier to the north (Gutium). Adad-nirari I (about 1325) has left an inscription which has been discovered at Kalah Shergat (Asshur). According to it, he, like his predecessors, waged most of his wars on the northeastern frontier of his kingdom, and endeavoured, by building cities, to revive the prosperity of the region occupied by the Shubari, Lulumi, Guti, and Kasshu of the northeast, which had been laid waste by previous wars. His inscription relates mainly to the buildings[375] he erected in connection with the temple of Asshur. It is the first from Assyria with a definite date. It was indited in the limmu (i.e. the year of office) of Shulman-kharradu.

His son, Shalmaneser I (about 1300), was one of the mightiest Assyrian kings, and probably the first who raised Asshur to a position equal, if not superior, to that of Babylonia. We do not know much about him from inscriptions left by himself, and are therefore obliged to depend on occasional statements of succeeding kings. He ruled over Mesopotamia westward to the Balikh at least, if not to the Euphrates, and assured to Assyria the possession of the northern tract between the Euphrates and Tigris, which was afterward the provinces of Gumathene and Sophene. He founded colonies there, and planted them with Assyrian settlers to form a bulwark to Mesopotamia against the tribes of the North. Afterwards, when the power of Assyria was impaired, these colonies were in great straits, but they held their own, and were then reinforced by Asshurnazirpal, to whom they served as a welcome basis for the new Assyrian province of Tuskhan which he established there.

With the extension of the kingdom and the inclusion of northern Mesopotamia, the need of another capital than Asshur, which lay too far to the south, made itself felt. The city Shalmaneser chose for this purpose was Calah, which remained the capital down to the time of Sargon, except during the period of decline which followed upon the reign of Tiglathpileser I. His object in this change of residence was clearly to give expression to the altered state of things which had come about in Assyria and Mesopotamia. Assyria was not to be the privileged kingdom, but the two political organisations, Asshur and the Kingdom of the Kishshati, were to be equal members of the new empire, each retaining its own centre in Asshur and Kharran respectively, while the king founded his own capital for himself, to avoid giving the preference to either.

Shalmaneser’s son, Tukulti-Ninib I (about 1275) [but probably somewhat earlier] was no less fortunate in his enterprises than his father. He was the first to achieve the object of every king in Assyria—dominion over Babylon. Adad-nirari III, in his list of his ancestors, styles him “King of Sumer and Accad,” from which we may certainly conclude that he held the same sort of position toward the whole of Babylonia, and the kingdom of Babylon more particularly, as was afterward attained by Shalmaneser II—that is to say, he must have ruled over the several provinces of all Babylonia and exercised a kind of suzerainty over Babylon.

The rapid rise of Assyria seems to have been followed by equally rapid decline. For a hundred years we have hardly any information concerning it, and do not even know the names of the kings who reigned during that period. The lack of inscriptions, or, at any rate, of vaunting records in the reigns of later kings, seems in itself to indicate a time of humiliation, while the conditions which we find prevailing when our sources of information become more copious, show that soon after the reign of Tukulti-Ninib, and therefore probably before the end of the thirteenth century B.C., the power of Assyria must have been seriously curtailed and exposed to grievous shocks. Whence they arose we shall presently see.b

There is scarcely a year in which additional information concerning this obscure period does not come to light. A recently deciphered fragment of the Babylonian Chronicle mentions an Assyrian king, Tukulti-Asshur-Bel, contemporaneous with Tukulti-Ninib, but of the relation of the two kings nothing is stated. Professor Winckler in Altorientalische Forschungen,[376] suggests that the former was the latter’s son, and co-regent while he was engaged in ruling and reducing Babylon. Professor Rogers sums up the end of Tukulti-Ninib’s life: “For seven years was this rule over Babylonia maintained. The Babylonians rebelled, drove out the Assyrian conquerors, and set up once more a Babylonian, Adad-shum-usur (about 1268-1239 B.C.), over them. When Tukulti-Ninib returned to Assyria he found even his own people in rebellion under the leadership of his son. In the civil war that followed he lost his life, and the most brilliant reign in Assyrian history up to that time was closed.”

This rebellious son was not the above mentioned Tulkulti-Asshur-Bel, but Asshurnazirpal I. His reign continues the period of decline, and in it it is believed that Adad-shum-usur actually attacked Assyria. Next come two kings, Asshur-narara and Nabu-daian, whose reigns seem to have been contemporaneous (about 1250 B.C.). A fragment of a clay tablet was found containing a letter from Adad-shum-usur to these two kings, in which he remonstrates on their folly in taking up arms against him, which shows that Babylon’s power was still waxing.a

We do not know how it came to pass that Assyria lost the ascendancy she had gained over Babylonia under Tukulti-Ninib, but it is certain that some fifty years later Bel-kudur-usur found himself relegated to Assyria proper, and was obliged to fight for the possession of his capital. [According to Professor Rogers, Meli-Shipak (about 1238) and Marduk-apal-iddin (about 1223-1211) were the Babylonian kings in this war. He places Adad-shum-iddin’s death at 1269, and Adad-shum-usur’s at 1238 B.C., basing these dates on some recent illuminative suggestions of Professor Hommel.] The Synchronistic History, which is incomplete at this point, states that Ninib-apal-esharra (who was probably the son of Bel-kudur-usur) was forced to retreat. The Babylonians appear to have pursued and besieged him in his own capital of Asshur, and there a battle was fought, in which, according to the apparent purport of the Synchronistic History, the Assyrians were beaten. But the victory, if victory it were, cannot have been decisive, for after the battle the Babylonians withdrew without making any further attempt to invade the remoter parts of the country. The defeat of the Assyrians must, therefore, have been more like a successful defence of their city. Slight as this clew is, it makes it evident that for a while Assyria had to fight for her life against Babylon, and that she held her own with difficulty. The development of this state of things must be sought in the great hiatus made by the reign of Bel-kudur-usur. The titles of the Babylonian kings of the period also go to prove that at this time Babylonia had actually repossessed herself of northern Mesopotamia.

Since we find Tiglathpileser in possession of much the same dominions as Tukulti-Ninib (though Sumer and Accad did not belong to him), the course of events during all the twelfth century, from Ninib-apal-esharra to Asshur-rish-ishi, is self-evident. The business in hand was the reconquest of what had been lost, and at it the succeeding rulers steadily and successfully laboured.

Of Ninib-apal-esharra, the Synchronistic History says nothing except that he successfully withstood the Babylonian attack, nor does Tiglathpileser mention any other deeds of his. The latter, however, expressly gives him the character of a capable commander, “who led the troops of Asshur aright,” presumably with reference to his retreat after the death of Bel-kudur-usur and the repulse of the Babylonian king.

[377]

His son and successor, Asshur-dan (about 1200 B.C.), won some victories over Babylon and reconquered some parts beyond the Zab from Samana-shum-iddin (king of Babylonia). Tiglathpileser lays stress upon the fact that he lived to a great age (to about 1150 B.C.). Of his son, Mutakkil-Nusku, no particulars are known. He probably carried on the work of his predecessors, for Assyria gradually regained all she had lost.

Then Asshur-rish-ishi (about 1140 B.C.), the father of Tiglathpileser I, reports that he had reconquered the Lulumi and Kuti, whom Adad-nirari had formerly subjugated, and who had either fallen under the sway of Babylon or made themselves independent; and that he had repulsed the nomads, whom Adad-nirari had likewise driven back, and who had naturally taken advantage of Assyria’s weakness to press forward again. His war with Nebuchadrezzar I, king of Babylon, seems to have been waged mainly for the possession of Mesopotamia, which the defeat of the nomads was also intended to secure. It is most probable that he gained his end, the evacuation of the kingdom of Kishshati, of which Nebuchadrezzar styles himself king in one of his inscriptions.b

THE FIRST GREAT ASSYRIAN CONQUEROR

Asshur-rish-ishi’s son, Tiglathpileser I (Tu-kulti-apal-esharra, meaning “My help is the son of Esharra,” i.e. the god Ninib), is the first of the great Assyrian conquerors. Directly after his accession to the throne he marched against the Mushke (Mushkaya) to conquer the districts previously taken by them. The Mushke (the Meshech of the Old Testament, and the Moschi of the Greeks) were defeated, as well as the people of Kummukh and the mountainous races of the Kharia and Qurkhi country stretching from the north of the Tigris to the Upper Zab. In the next campaign the same district was traversed, but the king then crossed the Lower Zab, and thence proceeded northward into the mountains. The whole mountainous district was then incorporated with the Assyrian kingdom, and Tiglathpileser was then able to proceed to the subjugation of the lands of western Armenia and Pontis, never before entered by the Assyrian rulers.

He crossed sixteen mountains, reached (what he calls the land of the Nairi) the upper Euphrates, which he crossed, and defeated in a great battle twenty-five kings [twenty-three according to others], who encountered him with their troops and war chariots. The enemies were pursued as far as the banks of the Black Sea, when all the princes swore fealty and bound themselves to pay tribute. On the return march the town Milidia, i.e. Melitene on the Euphrates, was taken and forced to pay tribute.

The next, the fourth campaign of the king was directed against the Aramæans, of the North Mesopotamian steppe; he penetrated as far as the[378] Euphrates, and conquered several places in the vicinity of Carchemish. Then followed an expedition to the east against [the Musri and] the then unknown race of the Qumani. In later years Tiglathpileser undertook campaigns in the west. An inscription at the source of the Supnat, the first easterly tributary of the Tigris, tells us that he traversed the country of Nairi (Armenia) three times, and that he subjugated all the country “from the great sea of the west country to the sea of Nairi.” In particular we learn that he made a voyage in ships from Arvad (Aradus) on the Mediterranean Sea, that he hunted in Lebanon (he was a passionate hunter), and that the kings of Egypt sent him some rare sea fishes as a present. It is very probable that one of the mutilated inscriptions which the Assyrian kings had put up on the Dog River (the Nahr-el-Kelb, north of Beirut), quite close to the victory monuments of Ramses II, related to Tiglathpileser. He also made war against Marduk-nadin-akhe of Babylon, but with no success; at least we learn that the Babylonian king, in the year 1110 B.C., carried off images of gods from an Assyrian city. [According to Professor Rogers, Tiglathpileser marched to Babylon and was there acknowledged King of the Four Quarters of the World.]

However, Tiglathpileser in a second campaign was completely victorious in a battle of the Lower Zab, and took all the capitals of the northern half of Accad: Dur-Kurigalzu, the double town Sippar, Babylon, and Upi. The steppe district on the western bank of the Euphrates (the land of the Shuhi or Sukhi) was also subjugated by him. Thus did Tiglathpileser create a great kingdom, which included the whole district of the Euphrates and Tigris, as far as Babylon, as well as the mountainous country of western Armenia and eastern Asia Minor, as far as Pontis; and his supremacy was also recognised by northern Syria.

Of the organisation of the kingdom, we only know that the contiguous districts, such as the valley of the Khabur, eastern Kummukh, and Qurkhe were incorporated with the state, and governed by Assyrian ministers, whilst the more distant countries retained their native rulers, and were only bound to the payment of tribute. The kingdom has no enduring position. We hear that Asshur-bel-kala (about 1090 B.C.), the son of Tiglathpileser, lived in the greatest peace with Marduk-shapik-zer-mati, the Babylonian king. When, after the latter’s fall, Adad-apal-iddin, the son of Esagila-shaduni, was raised to the throne, Asshur-bel-kala married his daughter and brought her home to Assyria, with many presents. [In this reign, according to Rogers, the seat of empire was probably established at Nineveh.]

Babylonia had evidently regained her complete independence, though the Assyrian chronicles fail to relate the means whereby it was achieved. Asshur-bel-kala was succeeded by his brother Shamshi-Adad (about 1080 B.C.), of whom we know nothing further; and then follows a great gap in the line of kings. [Here may be inserted the names of Asshurnazirpal II about 1050 B.C., Erba-Adad, and Asshur-nadin-akhe.]

Of King Asshur-erbi it is only mentioned that under him the districts conquered by Tiglathpileser, namely, the country Pitru on the Sagur near Carchemish, and the city of Mutkinu, east of the Euphrates, were taken by the Aramæan king. This was evidently the king of the country of Bit-Adini, whose chief dominion lay east of the Euphrates, the capital being Tel-Barsip, which is probably Birejik, opposite the Zeugma of the Greeks. At the beginning of the ninth century we again have more accurate information about Assyria, and so find that, beyond a part of the mountainous district[379] east and southeast of Nineveh, the kings now have only the country on the upper Tigris (around Amida), Kummukh, and a great part of the cultivated land of Mesopotamia.

The district on the Euphrates, opposite Carchemish, is independent and split up into several princedoms (Bit-Adini, Nila, Bit-Bachiani, and farther north, Tel-Abnai), the exact boundaries of which it has hitherto been impossible to determine. The country on the Balikh seems to have remained Assyrian; it is very remarkable that the city of Kharran is not mentioned in any of the later campaigns. The district farther east, Nisibis and the neighbouring Gozan, the fruitful valleys of the Khabur and its tributaries, even the city of Suru in the land of Bit-Khalupe on the Euphrates (Sura, east of Thapsachos), were governed by Assyrian ministers. The government of Assyrian ministers in the lower valley of the Khabur is of special interest to us.

The whole district of this river, as well as the land of Sangara farther east, is full of heaps and ruins, which mark the localities of old and later times. The most important are the ruins at the place now called Arban on the Khabur. Here are the remains of an ancient palace, built in the Assyrian style, with four winged oxen, with men’s heads, an open-mouthed lion, the portrait in relief of a warrior, etc. The oxen bear the inscription “Palace of the Mushesh-Ninib.” The possibility of getting at a satisfactory date for this palace is unfortunately not yet apparent. That scarabs of Tehutimes III and Amenhotep III have been found in Arban and Calah, is no sufficient clew. As King Asshurnazirpal III of Assyria went down the Khabur in the year 884 B.C., Shulman-khaman-ilani of Sadikkan and Ilu-Adad of Shuma brought him heavy tribute. Doubtless one of these two places is the Arban of to-day, and their governors were semi-independent Assyrian ministers, known as the Mushesh-Ninib, for the names, writing, and style of art show us that we have not here to do with a native government. The population of the valley of the Khabur was doubtless Aramæan, like that of Kharran and Nisibis.

The eleventh and tenth centuries B.C. confirmed the complete freedom of the local government of the countries of Western Asia. Whilst the kingdom of the Pharaohs was decaying from age, a new nation was rising in Syria and evolving an active intelligent life of its own.

The Phœnician merchants circulated the products of the civilisation of Syria along all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and the dwellers on the Ægean Sea having already entered the circle of cultured races, competing with the Phœnicians in trade and the traverse of the sea, took possession of the coasts one after another and thereby developed a complete political and intellectual life. The fate of Western Asia was determined by the evolution of Syria’s culture not taking a wide-reaching, powerful, political form, but rather hindering it. Since the days of the Kheta kingdom’s glory, there has been no great power in Syria. So when a conquering, military state was now formed on the Tigris, under a fearless, warlike prince, it met with no sustained resistance.

The success of Assyria was due to her military organisation. Little as we know of its particulars, there can be no doubt that the whole race regarded war and conquest as the real aims of existence, and the more successful they were, the more they ignored all other sides of life; whereas the little states of Syria made tillage, trade, and industry the chief occupations of their life, albeit every inhabitant was presumably bound, like the Israelites, to take up arms in case of need, in the defence of his country. The sole great military[380] power was Egypt, but her warrior caste was composed of foreign mercenaries who exploited the country, although from a military point of view they evidently did not benefit it more than the generality of their class in similar cases.

The outcome of events was thus a foregone conclusion. The Assyrian campaigns of two centuries ended in the political and national fall of the races of Syria. The progress of events then led further to the annihilation of nationality in the whole of Western Asia. The kingdom of Tiglathpileser I fell, soon after his death, and there now ensues a little later a gap of more than a century in our information about Assyria. The very scanty notices commence about 950 B.C. Asshur-dan II, mentioned as “the maker of a canal,” reigned at that time. [A recently discovered inscription of Adad-nirari II speaks of his grandfather Tiglathpileser. Therefore, a new Tiglathpileser, the second of his name, is now reckoned in the list of kings, and the approximate dates 950-930 B.C. assigned to his reign. Nothing is known of him except that he is called “King of Kishshati and King of Asshur.” Asshur-dan II’s reign is now put down as beginning 930 B.C., and Adad-nirari II’s at 911.] Asshur-dan’s successor, Adad-nirari II, mentioned with the building at the “Gate of the Tigris” (890 B.C.), conquers King Shamash-mudammik of Babylon in a battle on Mount Yalman, and made war against his successor, Nabu-shum-ishkun [who was also defeated and yielded certain cities]. In the peace made by an alliance, the boundary was fixed near the city of Tel-Bari, south of the Lower Zab.

The next king, Tukulti-Ninib II (890-885 B.C.), fought in the northwest mountains, and at the source of Supnat, the first tributary of the Tigris, he had his statue (stele) erected near that of Tiglathpileser. In spite of repeated attacks, the mountainous districts on the east as far as the lake of Van, the chief part of the land of Qurkhi, retained essentially their independence. The warlike efforts of these rulers had been hitherto directed against the races of the mountains of Kasjar (Masius), the south of the Tigris, and close to Aramæan Mesopotamia, which, in spite of numerous campaigns, had never been subjugated. If Nisibis, Gozan, and the valley of the Khabur, and apparently also Kharran, belonged to the Assyrians under Asshurnazirpal, they either remained independent after the twelfth century, or were subjugated by the kings of this period. In the east, the mountainous races of Khubushkia and Kirruri (on the Upper Zab, and as far as the lake of Urumiyeh) are tributary, and on the Lower Zab, we find under Asshurnazirpal, an Assyrian governor of Dagara, in the land of the Euphrates, whose fortified citadels were mostly situated on the banks of the river, or like Anat, on an island, paid tribute. Tukulti-Ninib’s son, Asshurnazirpal III (885 to 860), entered on fresh conquests directly after his accession to the throne.c

THE REIGN AND CRUELTY OF ASSHURNAZIRPAL

Tiglathpileser’s work of conquest was to be begun over again; Asshurnazirpal felt the full force of the mission, and he accomplished it with a cruelty worthy of the hero he took for pattern, and his successors applied themselves, as did he, to avenge, arms in hand, Asshur’s temporary humiliation.

Scarcely was Asshurnazirpal seated on the throne, when he turned attention to his armies,—his war chariots and armed men were numerous and[381] well equipped; they were ready to take the march. It was the land of Numme which received the first blow. Accustomed to prolonged and uninterrupted peace, the inhabitants had never even thought of measures for defence, and they fled to the mountains at the approach of the Assyrians, who made bloodless captures of the towns of Libe, Surra, Abuku, Arura, and Arubi, situated at the base of Mounts Rime, Aruni, and Etini. “These majestic peaks,” relates Asshurnazirpal, “rise up like daggers’ blades, and only the birds of the sky in their flight can reach their summits. The natives entrenched themselves among them as though in eagles’ nests. None of the kings, my fathers, had ever penetrated so far. In three days I reached those heights; I brought terror in the midst of their hiding places, I shook their nests; two hundred defenders perished by the sword, and I seized their flock and a rich booty. Their corpses strewed the mountains like leaves from the trees, and those who escaped had to take refuge in caves.” These proceedings terrified the peaceful inhabitants of the Kirruri district, who hastened from Simirra, Ulmania, Adanit, Khargai, and Kharasi, to throw themselves at the conqueror’s feet and offered all that he was wont to seize—horses, oxen, sheep, and brazen vessels. They were given an Assyrian governor. Such was the fright throughout the whole of Nairi that while he still lingered in Kirruri, Asshurnazirpal received ambassadors from the people of Gozan and Khubushkia who came from far to the east, bringing presents asking for the chains of slavery.

From Kirruri the Assyrian king went a little to the east into the district of Qurkhi, pillaging in turn at least a dozen towns and finally arrived at the borders of Urartu. The only serious resistance he encountered was under the walls of Nishtum, which paid dear for its courage. These beginnings were a forecast of the future, and Asshurnazirpal did not even wait for the following year to recommence. While still wearing the dignity of “limmu,” on the 24th day of the month Abu (July-August), he set out to lay waste the country now called the Bohtan district, between the Tigris and the western spurs of the Judi Mountains. Here were the districts of Nippur and Pazati, comprising more than twenty important towns, among which[382] Atkun and Pilazi were burned. Asshurnazirpal then crossed the Tigris and invaded Kummukh to claim the annual tribute it had forgotten to furnish. [It is possible that he went for the purpose of quelling a rebellion.]

At the moment he was thinking of going on to the Moschi, more to the northwest, a messenger brought him a letter which contained the following news: “The city of Suru (Surieh of the present day), which is subject to Bit-Khalupe, is in revolt; the inhabitants have put Khamitai, their governor, to death, and have proclaimed Akhi-yababa, son of Lamaman, whom they have brought from Bit-Adini, as their king.” Furious at this information, Asshurnazirpal invoked Asshur and Adad, counted his chariots and soldiers, and flew to the seat of trouble by descending the course of the Khabur. His progress was hampered by the arrival of many persons, their hands filled with presents and their mouths with protestations of fidelity. There were Shulman-khaman-ilani of Sadikkan, Ilu-Adad of Shuma, and a hundred others.

The city of Suru took fright, and the rebels came out to meet him, bringing the keys of the citadel. They kissed his feet, but Asshurnazirpal was inflexible. “I killed one out of every two of them,” he says, and one-half of the remainder was reduced to slavery. Akhi-yababa, a prisoner, witnessed the pillage of his palace, he saw his wives, sons, and daughters in chains, and his tutelary gods, his chariot, his armour, and his treasure carried off. He saw all his ministers flayed alive as well as the leaders of the rebellion. A pyramid erected at the city gate was covered with their skins; some were walled up in the masonry, others were crucified and exposed on stakes along the side of the pyramid. One would hesitate to believe all this and would willingly take the Assyrian monarchs for boasters of their cruelty, if the bas-reliefs with which they decorated their palace walls, and which to-day ornament our museums, did not speak to our eyes or their accompanying inscriptions speak to our intelligence. We must tax our wits to imagine more refinement of torture or of methods of execution.

Before Asshurnazirpal returned to Nineveh, he made a military tour of the regions about the junction on the Khabur and Euphrates, which formed the country of Laqi. All the petty dynasties of this land brought their tribute. Then he advanced as far as Khindanu, on the Euphrates, the frontier of the Shuhi country. On returning to his capital the king was followed by an endless file of slaves, horses, oxen, sheep, chariots laden with stuffs of wool and linen, ingots of gold, bronze and iron, copper and leaden vessels, and wooden framework; the booty, he says, was as numberless as the stars of the sky. The soldiers had laid hold of every manner of object, and in the division a use was found for everything.

At Nineveh the king occupied himself with embellishing his palace while he waited for the spring. In one of the inner courts he erected a statue to himself of colossal size, and the history of his recent conquests was engraved on the palace gates. He was daily obliged to receive the homage of ambassadors who arrived from all parts to acknowledge his suzerainty, offer presents, and claim the sad honour of serving such a master, for they had learned by experience that it was too late for a city to offer its submission when the king was at its gates.

It happened that Asshurnazirpal was en pleine fête surrounded by his court when news came of a rebellion in the region situated around the sources of the Tigris. The leader of this insurrection was an Assyrian, Khula by name, whom in former days Shalmaneser had appointed governor of Darudamusa and Khalzilukha. The king set out at once, and, arriving at the sources of the Tigris, he sought out the steles which his predecessors,[383] Tiglathpileser and Tukulti-Ninib, had erected, and by their side set up one for himself. On the way he stopped to levy tribute on the country of Izalla and took by assault the cities of Kinabu, Mariru, and Tela. After a bloody contest under the walls of the last place he put out the eyes and cut off the noses and ears of the prisoners whose lives he spared. Khula was flayed alive.

There stood in this region, within the land of Nirbu, a city which bore the name of Asshur and had probably been built by Tiglathpileser in order to control the surrounding country. Since this town had also taken part in the rebellion, Asshurnazirpal caused it to be razed to its foundations as well as the city of Tushka, upon whose ruins he built a pyramid surmounted by his statue and bearing an inscription which related the conquest of the land of Nairi. Here he received tribute of the kings of Nairi. The districts of Urumi and Bituni also brought their gifts. But scarcely had Asshurnazirpal turned his back when all the tribes of Nairi revolted, and he had to return and prosecute a regular man-hunt among the mountains.

The year had been very full, and it was easy to foresee that the disasters following the reign of Tiglathpileser would soon be repaired. In three campaigns Asshurnazirpal had carried the torch over a portion of the land of Nairi, to the south and east of Lake Van, to the sources of the Tigris, through the Khabur Valley, and down the Euphrates. But like the effect of a tempest which passes and devours everything, the Assyrian domination founded only in fear was fatally ephemeral and became shaky just as soon as the chastising arm was observed to withdraw.

Feeling secure in the direction of Nairi, which he had treated so harshly, Asshurnazirpal turned his attention to the fertile slopes along the left bank of the Tigris. He risked encountering the Babylonians, but these latter had no longer any fear for him, and the weakened, scattered Kassite (or Kossæan) tribes could scarcely be called formidable. Babitu, Dagara, Bara, Kakzi, and twenty other places underwent the fate reserved for cities taken by assault; one hundred and fifty towns were pillaged and burnt, and the whole land of Nishir was devastated. The rainy season suspended hostilities, and Asshurnazirpal returned to winter quarters at Nineveh, but as soon as the weather permitted on the first of Sivan (May) he returned to Zamua. The capital of Zamua was Zamri, and there King Amikha resided, in no condition to resist. He fled to the mountains where Asshurnazirpal dared not pursue him, and contented himself with laying hands on the riches of the palace. All the surrounding districts hastened to offer their submission with the exception of the city of Mizu, which was taken by assault.

The following year was consumed in military expeditions to the sources of the Tigris, in the lands of Kummukh, Qurkhi, and Kashiari, where certain cities like Mattiate and Irisia had neglected to pay tribute or manifested symptoms of rebellion. Asshurnazirpal experienced no serious or well-organised resistance except beneath the walls of Bit-Ura in the land of Dirra. “The city,” he says, “crowns a height, is surrounded by a strong double enceinte and lifts itself like a great thumb above the mountain. With the help of Asshur—my lord—I attacked it with my valorous soldiers, and besieged it for two days from the side of the rising sun. Arrows fell upon it like the hail of the god Adad. Finally, my warriors, whose zeal I had encouraged, fell upon the city like vultures. I took the citadel, I put eight hundred men to the sword, and I cut off their heads. I made a mound with their corpses before the city gate; the prisoners were beheaded and I put seven hundred of them to the cross. The city was pillaged and[384] destroyed; I transformed it into a heap of ruins.” Passing thence into the land of Qurkhi, Asshurnazirpal committed the same atrocities: two hundred captives had their heads cut off, and two thousand others were reduced to slavery. One of the kinglets of the land who had succeeded in winning the king’s good graces from the time of the first war, Ammibaal, by name, son of Zamani, had become odious to his people, because of his friendship for the tyrant, and he was put to death by his own officers. The king of Assyria hastened to avenge his faithful vassal. When the culprits saw the storm advancing, they tried to ward it off by offering all they possessed to the invader, and for once he remained satisfied.

He had under his authority all the regions between the source of the Supnat and the borders of the land of Shabitani on one side; between the land of Kirruri and that of Kilzani on the other, from the banks of the Zab to the city of Tel-Bari which is above Zaban from Tel-Sa-abtan to Tel-Sa-zabtan; besides this he annexed to his empire the cities of Kimiru and Kuratu, the land of Birut and of Kardunyash, and he imposed tribute upon the whole of Nairi.

What was to be done with so much wealth constantly accumulating in the storehouses of Nineveh, and for whom was this gold, these jewels, this bronze, these rich stuffs? To what use could he put these thousands of slaves who ran the risk of becoming so many idle mouths to feed? Asshurnazirpal had the idea of building a palace which would surpass the wildest dreams of his predecessors, and he fixed its location in the city of Calah, which was particularly the city of his dynasty.

British archæologists, who have made a special study of the ruins of Calah, astonished at the treasures they found buried under the mound Nimrud, have attempted to reconstruct from their own imaginations and the recovered documents the general aspect of the city in the days of Asshurnazirpal, who has left his name and inscriptions in every corner of it. “In a strong and healthy position,” says George Rawlinson, “on a low spur of the Jebel Maklub, protected on either side by a deep river, the new capital grew to greatness. Palace after palace rose on its lofty platforms, rich with carved woodwork, gilding, painting, sculpture, and enamel, each aiming to outshine its predecessors; while stone lions, sphinxes, obelisks, shrines, and temple towers embellished the scene, breaking its monotonous sameness by variety. The lofty ziggurat (pyramid) attached to the temple of Ninib, dominating over the whole, gave unity to the vast mass of palatial and sacred edifices. The Tigris, skirting the entire western base of the mound, glossed in its waves, and, doubling the apparent height, rendered less[385] observable the chief weakness of the architecture. When the setting sun lighted up the whole with the gorgeous lines seen only under an eastern sky, Calah must have seemed to the traveller who beheld it for the first time like a vision of fairyland.”

From the pyramid of the temple of Ninib the Assyrian priests observed the motions of the heavens, calculated the return of eclipses, and questioned the future. In the temple searched by Layard traces were everywhere found of Asshurnazirpal and what he himself calls “the glory of his name.” His portrait has been found repeated a dozen times on the bas-reliefs; he has all the features of a corrupt and cruel monarch. His low, retreating forehead lacks nobility; the eyes are unusually large; the cheekbones stand out prominently; the nostrils of the round, aquiline nose are too large; the clipped moustache, brushed and curled at the ends, reveals thick, sensual lips, while the chin and face are covered with that heavy false beard which falls upon the breast in symmetrical twists, and was worn by all the kings. The thick, short neck, the broad shoulders and thick-set body, gave the king a robust, vigorous aspect. His statue in the British Museum represents him standing. In one hand he holds a scythe, in the other a sceptre. On his breast is written, “Asshurnazirpal, great king, powerful king, king of legions, king of Assyria, son of Tukulti-Ninib (?), great king, powerful king, king of legions, king of Assyria, son of Adad-nirari, great king, powerful king, king of Assyria. He possesses lands from the shores of the Tigris as far as Labana [Lebanon]; he has subjected to his power the great sea, and all the lands from the rising to the setting of the sun.”

Several years after this statue was erected Asshurnazirpal would not have fixed the Lebanon range as the western limit of his empire, for the fortunes of war still smiled upon him. The last portion of his reign is filled with two great expeditions in which he covered himself with glory. The definite submission of the middle and lower Euphrates region, including the land of Kardunyash, and the conquest of a part of Syria and Phœnicia. A revolt in the lands of Laqi and Shuhi, on the Middle Euphrates, was an excellent pretext for recommencing the war interrupted by the work of embellishing Calah. [He marched upon Suru, levying tribute at every step.] For a long time this little land of Shuhi had been warring with the Assyrians, and though unceasingly beaten and ransomed, it nevertheless managed to hold up its head, and had been able hitherto to maintain its independence. Its sovereigns appear to have had continual friendly relations with their neighbours the kings of Babylon, at least on the occasions when it was necessary to resist the men of the North.

This time the Shuhites again appealed to the Chaldeans, whom the inscription, through tradition, doubtless, still calls the Kassites or Kossæans. [Suru was taken, and among the prisoners were the brother and the general of Nabu-apal-iddin, king of Babylon.]

Then terror seized the soul of the weak Nabu-apal-iddin, king of Babylon, and all Chaldea trembled. Unfortunate wars and intestine quarrels had put Babylon out of condition to fight against the all-pervading Assyrian superiority. Nevertheless Asshurnazirpal does not say that he entered Babylonia, which he even seems to have prudently respected. He contents himself with telling us that he erected his statue in the city of Suru, and spread terror throughout Chaldea and all the lands watered by the Euphrates.

The following year he was compelled to suppress a revolt of the mountaineers inhabiting the southern slopes of Mount Masius in the very heart of[386] Mesopotamia. This was the state of Bit-Adini, whose principal cities were Kaprabi and Tel-Aban. Asshurnazirpal scattered an army of eight thousand horsemen, and brought back to Calah two thousand four hundred slaves to work at the embellishment of his capital.

In spite of the peace which ruled in the Tigris and Euphrates basins, whose resources were, moreover, completely exhausted, Asshurnazirpal now resolved to strike a great blow on their western side, which would be a field for rapine in which no Assyrian had ever yet set foot. The occasion seemed favourable, for on the west of the Euphrates the Hittites were in no condition to wage war; they had not yet recovered from the terrible blows dealt them by Tiglathpileser, and their resistance in any case would not be very great.

Asshurnazirpal went right ahead [starting on the 8th day of Airu (April), 876.—Rogers], traversing the states of Bit-Bahian, Amila, and Bit-Adini as far as the Euphrates, which he crossed on floats in sight of Carchemish. Into the city he made a bloodless entry, receiving the homage and tribute of King Sangara. A Hittite prince, Lubarna, who ruled in the valley of the river Apre (modern Afrin) [in a state called Patin] and possessed places of considerable importance such as Hazaz and Kunulua (the capital). Lubarna made preparations to oppose the march of the invader, but on seeing him approach fell on his knees and stripped himself of all he possessed for offerings. He was soon master of both slopes of the Lebanon, and he could see the great Phœnician Sea (Mediterranean). There, in astonishment, and grateful to the gods for all their blessings, he offered them a sacrifice of thanks on a wave-washed rock. “I received,” he says, “the tribute of the kings of the land of the sea, the people of Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, Makhallat, Maiz, Kaiz,[23] Akharri, and of Arvad, which is situated full on the sea; they brought me silver, gold, tin, iron, iron utensils, garments of wool and linen, ‘pagut,’ large and small, of sandal and ebony wood, skins of marine animals, and they kissed my feet.”

Asshurnazirpal, protected by Ninib and Nergal, the gods of strength, embarked on a vessel which he captured in the harbour of Arvad and took a sea trip, during which he killed a dolphin. Several days later he hunted among the steep gorges of Lebanon, killed buffaloes and boars, capturing a number of them alive, which he sent to Assyria. He boasts of having killed one hundred and twenty lions himself, and claims that these animals succumbed to fright before his almightiness. He further enumerates troops of wild animals which he drove back to their lairs,—antelopes, deer, ibexes, gazelles, tigers, foxes, leopards; he also killed some eagles and vultures. Among these mountains this true son of Nimrod quite forgot himself until the king of Egypt, whom the fame of his deeds had reached, sent a congratulatory embassy asking for his friendship. When later the kings of Egypt and Assyria met on the shore of the Mediterranean, it was by no means for mutual congratulation and the exchange of presents.

After this, Asshurnazirpal turned northward into the Amanus Mountains, where he cut down cedar, pine, and cypress trees for his great buildings in Calah. No one will ever know how much effort, nor the lives of how many slaves it cost, to transport those gigantic logs cut in the Amanus forests over the mountainous and trackless country to the banks of the Tigris.

Asshurnazirpal never revisited the shores of the Mediterranean, and like Moses he but caught a glimpse of the promised land which his successors[387] were destined to conquer, and whose inexhaustible riches they so long exploited. What we know of the remainder of his reign is the story of unimportant expeditions, principally for the collection of tribute in the north of Mesopotamia and around the sources of the Tigris. The district of Khipani and its capital, Khuzirina, as well as the states of Assa, Qurkhi, and Adini, underwent new trials; the city of Amida, the modern Diarbekir, witnessed a pyramid of human skulls rising before its walls, and three thousand slaves—those whose eyes were not put out or who were not crucified—were sent to Nineveh, where they were employed in digging a great irrigation canal to make use of the waters of the Upper Zab, the borders of which were planted with trees torn from the forests of Syria.

The last eight years of his life seem to have been more peaceful than their predecessors, although we can scarcely suppose that he passed them in profound peace, which would be as hard to reconcile with his turbulent and sanguinary nature as with the terrible condition of the lands he had conquered, all of which were trying to regain their freedom. At all events, he left his successors an immense empire, an unbroken frontier, and an Assyrian domination recognised from the Zagros to the Amanus Mountains, and from the sources of the Euphrates to the gates of Babylon.d

SHALMANESER II AND HIS SUCCESSORS

Aside from the ruthlessness of his conquests, Asshurnazirpal was chiefly remarkable for rebuilding the city of Calah, constructing a canal, erecting himself a wonderful palace, whose ruins have been found at Nimrud, and the building or rebuilding of a great aqueduct. He, who had butchered and battled so liberally, died in 860 B.C. in peace.

His son, Shalmaneser II (Shulman-asharid) (860-824 B.C.) commenced warlike operations at once. After a campaign eastward (860) he entered upon a systematic conquest of the western countries. After several campaigns (859-856) Akhuni’s district of Bit-Adini, on both sides of the Euphrates, was completely subjugated, incorporated with the kingdom, and peopled with Assyrian colonists, and Tel-Barship on the Euphrates was changed into an Assyrian residence city under the name of Kar-Shulman-asharid (City of Shalmaneser). Finally he succeeded in capturing the prince who had fled across the Euphrates into the mountains. Next followed the campaigns on the west of the Euphrates. In the year 859 he twice defeated a coalition of North Syrian princes, the rulers of Carchemish, Patin, Sama’al, etc., joined by the kings of Que, and Khilukha; then he subjugated the Amanus district and the district on the lower Orontes (the country of Patin). In the following year, the annual tribute of all the North Syrian states was definitely settled.

In the year 854 B.C. Shalmaneser advanced farther south. Khalman made submission, but a strong coalition was formed against him in the district of Hamath by Hadad-ezer, or Ben-Hadad II, of Damascus, Irkhulina of Hamath, and Ahab of Israel. The adjacent smaller states of the princes, Matinu-Baal of Arvad (Aradus), Baasha of Ammon, etc., followed suit.

The Syrian states evidently recognised the full extent of the danger threatening them; Ahab of Israel probably made peace with Damascus so as to be able to withstand the Assyrians. Only the Phœnician cities were obdurate; whilst the Arabian prince, Gindibu, sent a thousand camel riders, and even the Egyptian king sent one thousand men. A battle took place at Qarqar in the vicinity of the Orontes. Shalmaneser boasts of a complete[388] victory. [His inscription says: “Fourteen thousand of their warriors I slew with arms; like Adad I rained a deluge upon them, I strewed hither and yon their bodies, I filled the face of the ruins with their widespread soldiers; chariots, saddle-horses, and yoke-horses I took from them.”]

But he attained no further successes, and his power was limited to northern Syria. In the years 850, 849, and 846, Shalmaneser renewed his attacks upon central Syria, the last time with one hundred and twenty thousand men, but without great success. Their tribute money was not much safeguard to the North Syrian princes, the places in the district of Carchemish and in the Amanus Mountains were again and again plundered and burned, and the inhabitants massacred. Only the king of Patin, who was farthest away, and therefore the most powerful of the vassals, seems to have been better treated.

The fifth campaign, in 842, was more successful, but in the meanwhile the revolutions in Damascus and Samaria overthrew the old dynasties, and Hazael and Jehu ascended the throne. In a battle at the foot of Mount Lebanon, Hazael was conquered and shut up in his capital; but Damascus was not taken. Shalmaneser laid waste the Hauran, then repaired to the coast, where Tyre and Sidon, and also Jehu of Israel, paid him tribute. The tribute payment of the latter (gold, lead, vessels, etc.) is depicted on Shalmaneser’s black obelisk. In the year 839 the campaign was repeated without any far-reaching success; and Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus paid tribute. When the people of Patin slew their king, the Assyrian general, Asshur-daian (or Dan-Asshur), took fearful revenge for the death of the faithful vassal. But Shalmaneser extended his dominion in this district northward only. In the years 838 and 837, twenty-four kings of Tabal (in Cappadocia), as well as the king of Milid (Melitene), were compelled to pay tribute; and in 835 and 834, King Kati of Que; i.e. East Cilicia west of Mount Amanus, was vanquished, and the town Tarzi (i.e. in all probability Tarsus), was taken and given to his brother Kirri.

Shalmaneser II had the same success in the east and north of his kingdom. After the mountainous district on the Tigris had been conquered, the Assyrians came into direct contact with the powerful race of the Alarodians, whose territory extended on both sides of the Lake of Van, from the source of the Euphrates to the land of Garzan, or Gozan, on Lake Urumiyeh. After making a fearful visitation to Khubushkia and its vicinity, Shalmaneser had already attacked their king, Arame, on the east in 860. In 857 he invaded his district on the west, after crossing the Arsanias. In 845 he penetrated as far as the source of the Euphrates, and in 833 Asshur-daian, his commander-in-chief, repeated the same campaign. It seems that Arame and his successor, Siduri (or Sarduris), in the year 833, made, on the whole, a valiant defence.

Much greater success attended the campaigns against the southeasterly mountainous races of Urartu on the “sea of the land of the Nairi,” i.e. the lake of Urumiyeh, and the districts of Manna, Parsua, Amada[24] (Media), etc., at the south and east of the same as well as that against the land of Namri southeast of the Zab. In the years 844, 836, 830, and 829 the campaigns in these districts were conducted sometimes by the king himself, and sometimes by his commander-in-chief.

The famous representations on Shalmaneser’s black obelisk show how King Sua of Gozan and the Lord of Musri (i.e. the eastern mountainous[389] district) sent him a collection of wonderful animals, double-humped camels, apes, a rhinoceros, an elephant, and a yak, besides gold, silver, bronze vessels, and horses.

Between the great campaigns there were a few smaller struggles; in 855 in the Masius Mountains, in 853 against the kings of Tel-Abnai, and in 847 against the town of Ishtarat and the country of Yati, districts south of the source of the Tigris; in 848 against the unknown land of Paqarakhubuni, west of the Euphrates, and finally in 831 against the Qurkhi. The black obelisk records that the desert district of Sukhi, on the other side of the Euphrates, subjected by Asshurnazirpal, remained dependent, and Marduk-bel-usur of Sukhi brings to the king as tribute silver and gold, elephants’ teeth, garments, and also stags and lions. In the years 852 and 851 Shalmaneser advanced to Babylon. The king of Babylon, Nabu-apal-iddin, had just died, and his brother Marduk-bel-usate had taken up arms against Marduk-nadin-shum, the son of Nabu-apal-iddin. Shalmaneser went to the assistance of the rightful king, defeated the rebels in two expeditions, and presented rich gifts in the sacred cities of Babylon, Borsippa, and Kutha to the chief gods enthroned there. Then repairing farther southward into the land of Chaldea proper, he vanquished the kings of Bit-Adini and of Bit-Dakkuri, and exacted tribute from Mussallim-Marduk and Yakin, who was ruler of the sea country, which was subsequently called Bit-Yakin after him.

We see that the unity of the kingdoms of Sumer and Accad was now no more; but that south of Kardunyash, the district of Babylon, there arose a line of smaller states. Perhaps the South was always separated from Kardunyash after the Kossæan conquest.

In the last years of Shalmaneser’s reign his son Asshur-danin-apli rebelled against him with a great portion of the kingdom, including Asshur, Arbela, the town of Imgur-Bel, founded by Asshurnazirpal, Amido, and Tel-Abnai, on the upper Tigris, Zaban on the Zab, etc. But another son, Shamshi-Adad IV, quelled the insurrection [and it took him four years of hard fighting to dissipate the opposition] and succeeded his father on the throne. The first campaigns of the new ruler were directed against the Nairi countries, the mountains on the north and east of the Tigris, and his general, Mushaqqil-Asshur, penetrated as far as the “Sea of the Sunset,” which means as far as the Black Sea. Then the king attacked Babylonia; a line of frontier places was taken, and [in the battle of Dur-Papsukal, in northern Babylonia] King Marduk-balatsu-iqbi, who had been supported by the rulers of Chaldea, Elam, Namri, and the Aramæan races of eastern Babylonia, was slain.

This expedition was repeated in the years 813 and 812; and other wars the king mentioned, in shorter notices, cannot be more accurately localised. He made no attempt of any encroachment of Syria’s rights.

The successes of [his son] Adad-nirari III (811-783 B.C.) are of greater importance. In the North and South all the races hitherto subjugated, including the Medes, the people of Parsua, etc., were kept in subjection. Frequent mention is made of expeditions against Manna, Khubushkia, Namri, and Aa. The king says that his kingdom was extended as far as the coasts of the “great Sea of the Sunrise,” i.e. the Caspian Sea. In 803 mention was made of an expedition “to the sea coasts” (i.e. Babylonia, not Syria). As in Shalmaneser’s time, all the kings of the land of Kaldi (Chaldea) paid tribute; in the chief cities of Babylonia the king offers sacrifice, gains rich booty, and fixes boundaries. Many expeditions were moreover made against the Aramæan race of Itu’a which dwelt in Babylonia, and these were repeated in subsequent reigns. “On the west of the Euphrates,” says Adad-nirari,[390] “I subjugated the land of Khatti, the whole land of Akharri, Phœnicia, Tyre, Sidon, the kingdom of Israel (Bit-Khumri), Edom and Philistia as far as the coasts of the West Sea, and imposed taxes and tribute upon them.” He makes special mention of an expedition against Mari, king of Damascus, who was besieged in his capital and forced to capitulate, and pay 2300 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 300 talents of bronze, 5000 talents of iron, so that the loot of the Assyrian king was very considerable. These events cannot be accurately fixed, chronologically. The chronological lists mention campaigns in 806, 805, and 797, against Arpad, Khazaz, and Mansuate in northern Syria. The war against Damascus was included in one of them, for it led to the payment of tribute by the Phœnician cities and the southern states (Israel, Edom, and Philistia). [There exists an inscription of this reign referring to Sammuramat as “Lady of the Palace and its Mistress.” There is some reason for conjecturing that this might have been the woman round whose name and undoubted prestige in so glorious a reign, clustered the legends of Semiramis. No previous Assyrian king ruled over so great a territory, or collected so much tribute as Adad-nirari III, or, as it is sometimes written, Ramman-nirari III. After him came a period of decline in which there are no royal inscriptions, and of which our knowledge comes from brief notes in the Eponym lists.]

The next king Shalmaneser III (782-773) also went to Syria and made war against Damascus, 773, the land of Khatarikka, 772, and the land of Lebanon.

His successor Asshur-dan III (772-754) also made war against Lebanon in the years 767 and 755, and against Arpad in the year 754. The subjugation of Hamath probably occurred in one of these expeditions. Battles are mentioned against Babylonia (in the district of the Aramæan race, Itu’a and the city of Gannanat) in 777, 771, 769, and 767, in which the city of Kalneh was presumably taken. But Shalmaneser III was chiefly concerned in the subjugation of the land of Urartu, the Alarodians. He is mentioned not less than six times as taking the field against them (781-778, 776, 774); but his efforts met with no, or at least no enduring, success.

In all probability the formation of a great Armenian kingdom with the city of Van (Thuspa of the Greeks) as the central point dates from this period. Its founder was Sarduris, the son of Litipris, who was probably identical with the king Sarduris who was conquered in 833 by Shalmaneser. In two inscriptions written in Assyrian, he calls himself “King of the land of Nairi.” His successors (Ispuinish, Minuas, Argistis I, Sarduris II) then utilised the Assyrian writing for inscribing the language of their country. For in the same record they call their kingdom Biaina, whilst it is called Urartu by the Assyrians. The inscriptions of the rulers are rather numerous and written quite in the Assyrian style. They record the buildings of the kings in Van itself, where a citadel was built by Argistis, sacrifices and gifts to Khaldi and the numerous other deities of the Armenian Pantheon, campaigns and conquests.

When still co-regent with Ispuinish, his father, Minuas erected monuments in the two high passes south of Lake Urumiyeh which record his conquests, and other inscriptions also relate his successes against the land of Manna and its vicinity. These battles presumably occurred in the latter time of Adad-nirari III, and are the continuation of his campaigns in the eastern mountains. Minuas also fought against the land of Alzi, against the king of the city of Milid (Melitene), and against the Kheta. An inscription on a wall of rock on the Arsanias below an old castle (near Palu) records[391] among others his successes in this direction. In the north he penetrated to and beyond the Araxes; one of his inscriptions is to be found on the right bank of the river opposite Armavir, and two others, written by his son Argistis, north of Eriwan. The latter seems to have been the most powerful ruler of Urartu. A long inscription on the rock of the citadel of Van records his successes in the land of Manna, which he seems to have subjugated, and also in the west, against Melitene, the land of Khatti (Kheta), etc.

Repeated victories over the Assyrians are mentioned, which were evidently won against Shalmaneser III and Asshurdan III, or their generals. Sarduris II, the son of Argistis, was also very successful in both districts. For it appears from his inscriptions, confirmed by later events, that Melitene, Kummukh, Gurgum, and other princedoms on the Amanus, became feudal states of the kingdom of Urartu, which included the whole Armenian plateau from the sources of the Euphrates and Araxes across Lake Urumiyeh. How Sarduris II succumbed to the Assyrian will be shown later.

The reign of Asshur-dan III seems to have been much more peaceful than the preceding ones, for the short chronicle of this period repeatedly records that the king remained “in the land,” and therefore undertook no campaign.

The successes of Argistis were of great importance. Insurrections also broke out in the interior in the years 763 to 758, first in the city of Asshur, then in Arrapachitis (Arpakha), a city situated in the vicinity of the Upper Zab, east of Nineveh, and finally in Guzanu, in the Khabur country. After its subjugation, Asshur-dan, as already related, repaired twice more to Syria (755 and 754), but it was not possible with the increasing extension of the Armenian power in this direction to retain supremacy over the smaller states of Syria.

The next reign, that of Asshur-nirari II (754-745) was still less eventful. He took the field only in the years 749 and 748 against the mountainous country of Namri, in the southeast [and in 754 against Arpad]. Otherwise, he remained “in the land.” In the last year of his reign the chronicle mentions an insurrection in Calah. The fact doubtless was that in the spring of the following year (746) the throne was ascended by a usurper who called himself after the first of the great Assyrian conquerors, Tiglathpileser.

The overthrown dynasty, which went back to Ishme-dagan and Shamshi-Adad and the ancient Bel-kap-kapu, had held the throne in uninterrupted succession for more than a thousand years.c

TIGLATHPILESER III (745-727 B.C.)

The eminent Dutch historian Tiele calls the new monarch Tiglathpileser II, but a recently discovered inscription of Adad-nirari II speaks of his grandfather, Tiglathpileser, and so the latter, of whom nothing is known beyond his name, is now denoted the second ruler of his name. Therefore the subject of the present chapter is here called Tiglathpileser III.

Tiglathpileser III mounted the throne of Assyria on the 13th Airu (about April) of the year 745 B.C., and resided, says Tiele, during the greater part of his reign at Calah and Nineveh, where he built palaces. He was without any doubt an Assyrian, and not a Chaldean, as has been supposed. Whether he was the rightful heir, or whether he was even of royal blood, remains undecided. His real name was Pulu (Pul, Poros), and there is reason to suppose that he was either a military commander or a younger son of the king, who took advantage of the confusion during the last years of the reign[392] of Asshurnirari II to put the crown on his own head. He assumed the name of the great conqueror, Tiglathpileser.

He may have employed the first months of his reign in restoring quiet in the country and establishing himself securely on the throne. It is only in September of the year 745 (month Tasrit) that he marches into the field and turns his arms against Babylonia. Nabonassar (Nabu-nasir) had ruled at Babylon since 747, but nothing else is known of him, though he seems to have been the founder of a new method of reckoning time. Tiglathpileser’s first campaign was not, however, directed against him, at least not immediately; his first object was to destroy the Aramæans’ and Chaldeans’ ever-increasing power in that country. After he had won possession of the city of Sippar, which lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and perhaps even of Nippur also, and had conquered Dur-Kurigalzu, together with some other less important strongholds of Kardunyash, as far as the Ukni, he subdued the nomadic Aramæans east of the Tigris, reorganised the government of the conquered territory, dividing it into four provinces, over which Assyrian governors were placed, founded two cities [Kar-Asshur was one and probably Dur-Tukulti-apal-esharra the other] as administrative centres to preserve the allegiance of the new territory, and peopled the new settlements with the prisoners of war. The priesthood of Babylon, Borsippa, and Kutha brought gifts from the temples of their gods into the king’s headquarters, and thus averted the danger which threatened their towns also. For the time Tiglathpileser contented himself with the successes gained. It was not at present his intention to subdue all Babylonia, or perhaps he was not yet strong enough to do so. Apparently all he desired was to secure the southern frontiers of Assyria against the invasions of the Aramæans and Chaldeans, who were becoming more and more audacious, before he ventured farther afield.

The security of the eastern border was of scarcely less importance. In the year 744 he marched against the ever turbulent Namri which lay in this direction; here, too, he compelled all to bow to his victorious arms, even penetrated the western portion of the future Media, and exacted tribute from all the Median princes as far as the eastern mountains of Biknu. He did not proceed in person to further conquests, but entrusted the punishment of those Medians who dwelt farther east to his general, Asshur-daninani, who returned victorious, bringing with him rich booty, especially in horses. However, this country was not incorporated in the empire.

His hand was now free for the re-establishment of the weakened power of Assyria in the west. But one of his most powerful enemies who had, perhaps, already stirred up Namri to resistance, namely Sarduris II of Urartu, or Chaldia, sought to prevent this. When Tiglathpileser had reached Arpad in Syria, he found his flank, and when he would have marched still farther, his rear, threatened by a considerable army at whose head was Sarduris, and which besides the latter’s troops consisted of those of the northern Hittite states of Melid, Gurgum, Kummukh, and Agusi. The defeat of the allies was complete. Sarduris had to abandon his camp and seek refuge in flight. About seventy-three thousand prisoners fell into the Assyrians’ hands.

The three following years were not fortunate. When Tiglathpileser marched against Kummukh he does not appear to have left an adequate garrison behind him in Arpad, for in the year 742 the town, and with it the key of the west country, was in the power of his enemies, and he found himself obliged to besiege it for three years. Not till the year 740 did he take[393] it, and thither came Kushtashpi of Kummukh, Rezin of Damascus, Hiram of Tyre, Uriakki of Que, Pisiris of Carchemish, and Tarkhulara of Gurgum, to offer him rich presents. One of the Hittite princes, Tutammu of Unqi, a district between the Orontes and the Afrin, refused his submission. His capital, Kinalia, was taken for the second time and the whole country placed under an Assyrian governor. In the year 739 Tiglathpileser continued his conquest northeast of Arpad, devastated Kilkhi, a district belonging to Nairi, and conquered Ulluba, where he founded an Assyrian capital under the name of Asshuriqisha. But it was long before the land of the Khatti (Syria) was pacified. Between 740 and 738 no less than nineteen districts belonging to the Syrian kingdom of Hamath, and some other adjacent districts, broke away from Assyria, and from some mutilated parts of the inscriptions it is believed we may conclude that they asked for help from Azariah [Uzziah], the warlike king of Judah. At all events, the latter at that time ventured to defy the power of Assyria, and Tiglathpileser connected this hostile attitude with the rising of the people of Hamath. About 738 Azariah was defeated and the country of Hamath added to Assyria. Then the king had recourse to his favourite means for the suppression of the sentiment of nationality—namely, the transplantation of prisoners of war in the most extensive fashion. Whilst all princes of any consideration and even an Arabian queen now offered the conqueror their submission and presents, he received the joyful tidings of important successes won by his generals on the other frontiers of the empire. The eastern Aramæans had shaken off the Assyrian yoke and advanced to the Zab, but were driven back, though with some difficulty. At the same time the governor of Lullume was harassing the Babylonians, whilst the governor of Nairi held in check the populations on the northern frontier. Booty and prisoners were sent to the king in the land of the Khatti.

The three following years (737-735) he was occupied with expeditions in the east and northeast. Some districts of Media were then under the Babylonian rule, and now passed to that of the Assyrians. But the most important event of this year was the march to Turushpa, the capital of Urartu [Chaldia], the residence of Sarduris, on the Lake of Van. No Assyrian conqueror had penetrated so far as this, nor did Tiglathpileser succeed in taking the town in which Sarduris had fortified himself after his first defeat; but the power of this dangerous rival was broken for a long time.

Tiglathpileser now determined to bring the west under his yoke, and did not rest until he had brought all the Hittite and Semitic countries to the coast of the Mediterranean and the frontiers of Egypt, except some Arabian districts, under his sway. This took him three years, from 734-732. The immediate inducement to this expedition was probably that Ahaz of Judah, threatened by Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel, called in the aid of Assyria. Moreover, the last two had probably paid no tribute, and, generally speaking, Assyria needed little persuasion to fish in troubled waters. The first attack was directed against Rezin. Beaten in the open field, he was compelled to retreat to his capital. Here Tiglathpileser shut him in “like a bird in its cage”; he conquered all the towns round about, including the important city of Sam’ala, and marched on, after having destroyed, according to his wont, all crops around Damascus, and thus increased the difficulty of transporting the means of existence. He marched into Israel (Bit-Khumri), wasting whole districts, some of which he added to his empire,—for the present, however, leaving the capital undisturbed. The immediate goal was now the Philistine Gaza, whose king, Hanno (Khanunu), probably trusting[394] in Damascus and Israel, had at first renounced his allegiance, but now on the approach of the Assyrian army fled to Egypt. The town was taken, and a rich booty fell into the hands of the victors. Askalon, whose prince Mitinti had made an attempt at rebellion, was punished—though probably not till later—and Rukipti, Mitinti’s son, raised to the throne. Shamshi, “the queen of Arabia in the land of Sheba,” also offered resistance, but was likewise utterly defeated and with difficulty escaped with bare life. Her country, which is certainly not to be confounded with the Sheba of the South, became an Assyrian province. Other Arab tribes submitted voluntarily, and amongst them the well-known Tema; and Tiglathpileser appointed the powerful tribe of the Idibi’il, as being nearest to Egypt, to be wardens of the marches at the gates of that still mighty empire. Now came the turn of Samaria, the only city of Israel which the conqueror had not yet reduced. He appears, indeed, to have visited it, but not to have besieged and taken it, yet he raised Hoshea, who had meantime slain Pekah, to the throne, or confirmed him in its possession. It was longer before Damascus fell. It continued to hold out for two years more. That it was then taken is probable.

Of all the kingdoms of the West there now remained only Tyre and Tabal, which latter lay much farther north. The king did not go in person against either of these towns, but he sent Rabshakeh, who subdued them and changed the government in Tabal, while on Tyre he imposed a tax of not less than one hundred and fifty talents [about £60,000, or $300,000]. Whether this took place now or later, cannot be said with certainty.

Victorious over all rebellious subjects in his colossal empire, and dreaded by all his neighbours, Tiglathpileser now felt himself strong enough to make a direct attack on the Aramæans and Chaldeans of Babylonia, and to conquer the holy city itself. In the year 731 he ventured and accomplished this act of daring. In Babylonia itself no one seems to have resisted him, and the population seem rather to have received him as a deliverer. He entered Sippar, Nippur, Babylon, Borsippa, Kutha, Kish, Dilbat, and Erech, each in their turn, and received the protection of the great gods, by offering them sacrifices. Then he fell on the Aramaic-Chaldean tribe of Pekud (Pekod), subdued it as far as the frontiers of Elam, continued his victorious march through the Chaldean states of Bit-Silani and Bit-Sha’alli, which soon succumbed to his arms. Nabu-ushabshi, the king of the former state, was impaled before the gate of his capital, Sarrabani, and the town levelled with the ground; Zakiru of Sha’alli was sent to Assyria in chains, and the capital, which still offered resistance, was starved into surrender. Bit-Amukkani, whose king, Ukinzer (Chinziros), who appears to have been at that time the leading chief of the Chaldeans, and consequently regarded as king of Babylon, was not so easily overcome. It is true that the whole country was ravaged and the king shut up in his capital of Sapia; that a sortie of the garrison miscarried; that in fear of the overwhelming strength of Assyria, Balasu of Bit-Dakkuri, Nadin of Larak (Bit-Shala), and even Marduk-bal-iddin [Merodoch-baladan] of Bit-Yakin on the seacoast, the man who was later to become so terrible an enemy to Assyria, came here to offer their costly gifts and their submission; but Sapia was not taken and Ukinzer not conquered, so that nominally he shared the rule over Babylon for yet another year. Still, from this time forward it was not without reason that Tiglathpileser styled himself king or overlord of Babylon, king of Sumer and Accad; he might boast that he ruled from the Persian Gulf to the far East, over the coasts of the Mediterranean as far as Egypt, and that he had[395] extended his kingdom farther than any of his predecessors. He reigned for three years more, for the most part in peace, as far as we know. Of his last two years it is reported that he clasped the hands of Bel; that is, that he received the highest religious consecration as king of Babylon. In the year 727 Shalmaneser IV succeeded him on the throne. The latter only ruled for five years, and of his short reign little is known.

SHALMANESER IV

In the list of the Babylonian kings for these five years, there stands, not his name, but that of Ulule, who was neither, as has been believed hitherto, an independent prince nor a viceroy appointed by Shalmaneser, but none other than Shalmaneser himself, who also probably resided at Babylon. Perhaps his expedition against Phœnicia and Israel falls as early as the year of his accession. The occasion of the war against Tyre, whose king, Elulæus, at that time stood at the head of the Phœnician towns, is said to have been an expedition undertaken by the latter against the Khittim of Cyprus. It is more probable that the Tyrian king, like Hoshea of Israel, had taken advantage of Tiglathpileser’s death to renounce his allegiance to Assyria. Shalmaneser again subdued Hoshea and raised tribute from him. At the same time he sent into Phœnicia a part of his army, which devastated the whole country, and once more made it tributary. After this the whole empire seems to have quieted down, for the following year (726) was a year of peace. But the calm was not of long duration. Scarcely had the Assyrian troops marched away, when Hoshea turned to the Egyptian king, in the hope that with his aid he might free himself from the yoke of Assyria, and from thenceforward once more refused the tribute.

We have here probably a great conspiracy, in which Elulæus was also concerned, for Shalmaneser now marched against both kings. He took Hoshea prisoner, evidently after a struggle, wasted the whole land of Israel, but at Samaria, whose population may very likely have incited the king to revolt, he encountered an obstinate resistance. Meantime the whole Phœnician mainland, either from fear or under pressure from the superior force of Assyria, hastened to desert from Elulæus and to submit to Shalmaneser. The Tyrian king found himself under the necessity of retreating to his fortress on the island of Tyre, where he was at once besieged. It was only under Shalmaneser’s successor that Samaria was taken after a three years[396]’ siege, and Tyre after one of five years. We cannot but experience a feeling of respect for these two cities, which ventured unaided—for the help from Egypt failed, as usual, to appear—to defy the gigantic power of Assyria.

[It is by no means undisputed that Shalmaneser marched against both Elulæus and Hoshea, as Professor Tiele states. Some of the historians believe that no action was taken against the king of Tyre, and that since there are no allusions to the five years’ siege in any of the inscriptions, Josephus, the sole authority, made a mistake in attributing to Shalmaneser an attack on Tyre that was really made by Sennacherib.]

The scanty records of Shalmaneser’s reign bear witness to material prosperity. That he was, as has been thought, a feeble ruler, under whose administration the empire declined, is entirely unproved. His early death prevented him from acquiring the same glory as his predecessor, and if, immediately after his decease, the vassals of the empire raised the standards of rebellion in every direction, this speaks rather for than against the influence of his personality.e

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER IV. FOUR GENERATIONS OF ASSYRIAN GREATNESS (722-626 B.C.)

After the death of Shalmaneser IV, the throne of Assyria was taken by a man of doubtful antecedents, who became the founder of a very powerful dynasty. This king, like some previous usurpers, adopted a name famous in Assyrian history. He became known to the world as Sargon II, and Rogers says he was not of royal blood; Tiele, however, from whom we shall quote, thinks differently.a

In the year 722 B.C. Sargon became king in Asshur. He was an Assyrian of royal blood, who seems, however, to have belonged to another branch than that of the dynasty which had ruled before Tiglathpileser III, nor does he appear to have been closely related to the latter and his successor. He boasts that he restored to the ancient seat of government, the city of Asshur, her long usurped rights, and to Kharran, the object of his especial favour, her former liberties, which had also long been curtailed. Evidently, therefore, he appeared to a certain extent in the character of an innovator, or rather as the restorer of the ancient order.

Samaria fell shortly after his accession, and a part of its inhabitants were led away into banishment, to be replaced later on by others. Whether or no Sargon was present in person is not clear, but it is certain that he could not long devote his attention to the western portion of the empire. Scarcely was Shalmaneser IV dead before the Chaldeans revenged themselves for the humiliation they had suffered at the hands of Tiglathpileser. Marduk-baliddin [Merodach-baladan] of Bit-Yakin, at that time the most powerful amongst them, since through his timely submission to the Assyrians his country had been preserved from the miseries of war, had made himself master of the city of Babylon, and now ruled as king over the whole Babylonian country. Sargon marched south, perhaps in the hope of recovering what was lost. But in this he was unsuccessful. He did not venture to attack Babylon itself, but turned his arms against an Aramæan tribe, the Tu’mun, who had surrendered their chief to the Chaldean king. The tribe was subjugated and carried to Syria. Sargon now pressed on as far as the town of Dur-ilu in whose suburb he sustained with Babylon’s ally, the Elamite king Khumbanigash, a hotly contested fight, from which he asserts that he came off victor. This campaign, however, yielded no further advantages. Elam retained its independence and Merodach-baladan possession of Babylon. An[398] indirect result was that the South had learned to know Sargon as a military commander, and, for the future, good care was taken not to molest him.

The danger threatened from another quarter. Syria was up in arms. At the head of the rising was Hamath, where a man of mean origin, Ya-ubidi or Il-ubidi, had seized the government. Arpad, Simirra, Damascus, and Samaria followed his example. He found a support in Hanno (Khanunu) of Gaza, who had resumed his throne, and even in Shabak,[25] the Ethiopian king of Egypt, whom Hoshea’s unhappy fate does not seem to have frightened from endeavouring to measure his strength with the imperial might of Assyria. Even before the allies could unite their forces, Sargon, who probably received early intelligence of what was going on in the countries of the Mediterranean coast, encamped before Qarqar, where Ya-ubidi had fixed his headquarters, stormed and burnt the city, had the ringleader flayed alive and his principal adherents put to death, increased his host with three hundred warriors who fought in chariots, and six hundred horsemen from amongst the conquered, and then marched south against the allied armies of Hanno and Shabak. At Raphia on the Egyptian frontier was fought the decisive battle, which turned out a brilliant victory for the Assyrians. Hanno was taken and carried off to Assyria with nine thousand of his subjects, and Shabak owed his safety only to his precipitate flight in which he was accompanied only by his chief herdsman. Hezekiah seems to have thought it wise not to defy the victor; perhaps he even sent Sargon a present. Tyre also must have been pacified in this year (720).

Meantime the other enemies of the empire were not yet cowed. The whole north, northeast and northwest, longed impatiently to shake off the Assyrian yoke. In this they were supported by Mitatti of Zikirtu, Rusas of Urartu and Mita of Muskhe, who had secretly formed a league over which Sargon was to triumph only after a long and fierce struggle. In the year 719 Mitatti contrived to persuade some towns of the loyal Iranzu of Man to revolt, whilst Rusas brought several other towns under his sway. Sargon proceeded against them with so much energy that the instigators themselves held cautiously aloof, while they beheld their country laid waste and most of its inhabitants carried into the west, especially to Damascus. In the year 718 unrest revealed itself in Tabal, where Kiakki, prince of Sinukhtu, refused to pay his tribute. But he, too, was soon led away captive to Assyria, together with seven thousand of his subjects, and Matti of Atun, a faithful vassal, was invested with Kiakki’s province. In the year 717 Sargon had to suppress a dangerous rising. Pisiris, the Hittite prince of Carchemish, which was one of the keys of the West, attempted, with the support of Mita of Muskhe, to make himself independent. But his city was taken, the majority of his subjects carried off, and an enormous booty stored in Asshurnazirpal’s palace at Calah, which Sargon had restored for himself.

These disturbances were nothing compared with the war which now, in the year 716, broke out against Sargon and lasted several years. Rusas of Urartu had persuaded the chief men of the Assyrian provinces of Karalla and Man to secede, in which he was supported by Zikirtu and by the mountain region of Umildish, which was governed by a certain Bagdatti. It appears that the rebellion had spread all over the eastern frontier, and the princes of western Media also took arms. Sargon boldly attacked his enemies. He began with the country of Man, which lay nearest, soon got Bagdatti into his power, and had him flayed. The chief men of Man raised[399] Ullusunu, the brother of Aza, whom Bagdatti had murdered, to the throne and compelled him to join Rusas’s party, to which the princes of the Nairi states, Karalla and Allabra, whose names, Asshurli and Itti, denote them as Assyrian deserters, also went over. But scarcely had Sargon set out against them before Ullusunu and his nobles found themselves obliged to offer their submission. Sargon confirmed the former in his kingdom, and compelled his two allies with other petty chiefs to return to their allegiance. The territory of the city of Kisheshim was ruled by a governor, Bel-shar-usur, probably a Babylonian. Sargon gave it the name of Kar-Nergal and made it into an Assyrian province. A like fate befell the west Median town of Kharkhar, which had expelled its sovereign, Kibaba, and solicited support from Dalta of Ellipi; henceforth it was called Kar-Sharrukin [City of Sargon]. On this the governors of other Median towns made their submission.

But after these isolated successes it was still long before the eastern states were quieted. In the following year (715) Rusas wrested twenty-two towns from Ullusunu, and a certain Daiukku, who is called viceregent of Man, was involved in the affair. Khubushkia, a state of Nairi, and the neighbouring districts, became refractory, and the territory of Kar-Sharrukin, incorporated only the year before, again seceded. At the same time in the west Mita of Muskhe made an invasion into the Assyrian district of Que [in eastern Cilicia] with considerable success. Nevertheless, Sargon succeeded in maintaining the upper hand at all points. He reconquered Kar-Sharrukin, fortified it more strongly than before, and received the homage of the governors of twenty-two Median cities. His general in the west was not content with reconquering the towns taken by Mita, but even pressed southward as far as the Arabian Desert, and transferred the tribes subdued there to Samaria.

Secure of the west, Sargon now felt in a condition to strike at the real authors of all the trouble in the east. After Man and some Median districts had paid their tributes, the next thing was to proceed against Mitatti of Zikirtu. So complete was the overthrow of this prince that, after the burning of his capital, Parda, and the desolation of his country, he with his whole people sought another home. It was a harder task to subdue Rusas, the soul of the confederacy. But this, too, was accomplished by the warlike king. Rusas was defeated among his high hills. His whole royal house, amounting to some 250 persons, fell with his horsemen into the victor’s hands, and he himself only escaped with much difficulty and hid in the mountains. Rusas still built hopes on one of his allies; if he would make a stand all was not yet lost. This was Urzana of Muzazir, a former vassal of Asshur, who had, however, joined Rusas as the chief of a kindred tribe. In his mountain country, protected by its natural strength and almost impenetrable, he believed himself entirely safe. But the dauntless spirit of the ancient Assyrian warriors was not extinct in Sargon. He piously commended himself to the protection of the gods, assembled a carefully selected body of troops, and ventured with them on the almost impossible enterprise. When Urzana understood that the valiant hero was actually approaching with his veterans, he fled, according to the praiseworthy custom of Asiatic despots, with all speed into the higher mountains, leaving his capital and his own family to the mercy of the enemy. Muzazir’s fate was now soon decided; with a large number of prisoners, and an extraordinarily rich booty, including the two great gods of the country, Sargon returned to his own country. This was the death-blow for Rusas. The whole structure[400] so laboriously prepared lay in ruins, and filled with despair he fell upon his sword.

When Sargon had thus secured his empire against the danger threatening from the half-savage barbarians of the north, he re-established order in the northwest and west. Next he turned, not against the chief author of the trouble, Mita of Muskhe himself, but against Tabal, which lay not far and somewhat to the south of Muskhe. Ambaris of Tabal, to whom previously, while his father Khulle was still alive, Sargon had amongst other tokens of favour given one of his daughters to wife, and whose kingdom he had increased by the grant of Cilicia, had been ungrateful enough to join with Rusas and Mita. In the year 713 Sargon punished him as he had deserved, and made his country into an Assyrian province. The same thing happened to Khamman and Melid in the following year. Sargon peopled the country with foreign prisoners of war, and endeavoured by the erection of ten fortresses to secure it against Urartu and Muskhe. Continuing its southward march, the Assyrian army remained for a time in the region of the Amanus, and then, in the year 711, attacked Gurgum in the neighbourhood of Kummukh, which became an Assyrian province.

It is very doubtful whether Sargon took a personal share in these expeditions. It was during just these years that he was occupied with the construction of his new residence of Dur-Sharrukin. It is certain that the devastation of Ashdod, which concluded the campaign of 711, was effected not under the king’s superintendence, but under that of the king, Akhimiti, whom Sargon had installed there, but who had been expelled, and Yaman, a man of mean origin, raised to the throne by the people. On the approach of the Assyrian army this hero fled to Egypt, but the king of Melukhkha (Egypt), fearing the vengeance of Assyria, sent him back loaded with iron bands. The population of Ashdod was also carried away and replaced by other tribes. Fortified by these triumphs, Sargon could now collect his forces in order to undertake a war which should set the crown to all his achievements. This was the conquest of Babylon, which had been for the last twelve years in the possession of the Chaldean king, Merodach-baladan.

Two years were required for this undertaking, in which Sargon proceeded with great caution. Merodach-baladan was ready for the attack. He had not neglected to make the necessary dispositions and to strengthen his fortresses. In one of them, Dur-Atkhara, which was probably the nearest to Assyria, and whose defensive works he had caused to be raised, he had concentrated the whole military power of the Aramæan tribe of Gambuli, and had sent to their assistance a portion of his own choicest troops, six hundred horsemen and four thousand foot. Sargon directed himself against this fortress, and whilst he was besieging it, it is probable that another division of his army won several successes in the east, where it had to keep the Elamite king, Shutur-nakhundi, occupied, and prevent him from joining hands with his ally. Dur-Atkhara fell; more than eighteen thousand prisoners and a great booty became the spoil of the conqueror, and the rest of the defenders hastily took to flight. The Assyrian king made the town his headquarters; he subsequently gave it the name of Dur-Nabu, and placed it under an Assyrian governor. The Khamarani tribe which dwelt on the banks of the Euphrates, in their terror at the approach of his army, had already taken refuge in the town of Sippar. At the news of the surrender of Dur-Atkhara, and the defeat of the Gambuli, the Aramæan tribes of Rubu, Khindaru, Yatburu, and Puqudu, who dwelt east of the Tigris, and relied on the protection of Babylon[401] and Elam, withdrew behind the river Ukni. The Assyrians threw a bridge across the Umlias, a river to the north of Elam, and took several strongholds there, whereupon some chiefs of the Aramæans did homage to the king at Dur-Atkhara. They were assigned to the new government of Gambuli. The remainder were attacked and defeated in the territory of the Ukni, so that of them also many submitted, and were made subject to Gambuli. Now the army of Assyria operating east of the Tigris attacked Elam from Yatburu, subdued all the surrounding country, the seven principalities of Yatburu, with which two fortresses conquered from Elam were incorporated, and a part of the Elamite territory itself. It compelled the forces of the land of Rash, which belonged to Elam, to retire to a fortress, and the Elamite king to seek refuge in the high mountains of his country. Secured against any surprise from this quarter, Sargon himself with the main body now crossed the Euphrates into the Chaldaic-Babylonian state of Bit-Dakkuri, whose capital, Dur-Ladinna, henceforth became his headquarters.

There was now no room for Merodach-baladan in Babylon. Threatened on three sides, and in danger of being cut off by Sargon from his own principality, he and his troops left the city during the night and directed their steps to the Elamite part of Yatburu, whence they might advance against the enemy in co-operation with Shutur-nakhundi. But, although he offered the latter the most costly presents, the Elamite had not yet forgotten the lesson he had received. He declined to expose himself to new defeats, and so, perhaps, lose both land and people. Merodach-baladan left Yatburu, having gained nothing, and collected his army in a stronghold of his own country, called Iqbi-Bel.

Meantime, at Dur-Ladinna, in Bit-Dakkuri, not only did Sargon receive the submission of the inhabitants and the neighbouring Bit-Amukkani, but the authorities of Babylon also came in solemn embassy, bringing an invitation to enter the holy city, with which he immediately complied. At the great festival of the lord of the gods in the month of Shabat (January) he was permitted “to clasp the hands” of that great Bel-Marduk and Nabu, the king of the universe.

But still the south of Babylonia was not yet subjugated, for there Merodach-baladan was still in arms. He collected all his forces in the immediate neighbourhood of his capital, and at the same time, for fear of treachery, led thither the population of the ancient cities of Ur, Larsa, Kishik, etc. Strong defences were set up and special canals dug, behind which he entrenched himself with his allies. But the great king did not shrink before all these obstacles. Scarcely was the campaign of the year 709 begun, before he marched south, distributed his troops along the enemy’s whole line of defence, and inflicted on the latter so terrible a defeat that the trenches appeared as though full of blood, and the Suti, who had marched from Bit-Yakin to the rescue, did not venture an attack, but hurriedly retreated. Then Sargon fell on the auxiliaries and slaughtered them like sheep. Terror now seized on the Chaldeans’ main army; Merodach-baladan left his camp with all speed and retreated to his city. But it, too, was soon taken after a short siege, and with this the power of Merodach-baladan was broken. It is uncertain whether he himself fell into his enemy’s hands or saved himself by flight; but probably the latter was the case, for immediately after Sargon’s death he is again in a position to take action, at least if the Merodach-baladan, who then revolted against Sennacherib, is the same who was conquered by Sargon and his son. But for the time Babylonia was freed from the Aramaic-Chaldean domination, and breathed again. Sargon restored the ancient[402] rights of the natives which the oppressors had curtailed in favour of the foreigners. To the towns of southern Babylonia he gave back their stolen gods; he everywhere showed himself extremely liberal to the temples and the ancient religion of the country. In all directions he appeared as deliverer, avenger of the insulted gods, restorer of the ancestral religion, protector of the priests and of all the natives of the country. His triumph did not signalise the commencement of foreign rule, but, on the contrary, it was he who put an end to it.

Sargon’s rejoicings over his victory were still further increased by the embassies and reports which he received one after the other. Uperi, the king of the island of Dilmun, in the Persian Sea, did homage to him while he was still at Bit-Yakin, and gave costly presents. When he had marched from southern Babylonia to consolidate his dominion in the conquered countries, still more welcome tidings reached him at Irma’i. Even his great enemy in the northwest, Mita of Muskhe, who had stood with Rusas at the head of the confederacy against Asshur, but who had been overcome by the governor of Que, now sent ambassadors to Sargon with presents and protestations of homage and devotion. When, finally, the king had again returned to Babylon, there came envoys from seven districts of Cyprus, “whose names had never been known to the kings, his fathers, since the rule of the god Sin,” and who offered him valuable gifts and kissed his feet. Thus the empire of the mighty conqueror stretched from the island of Dilmun, in the Persian Gulf, to the Isle of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean.

Sargon returned to Calah in the beginning of 708, his fourteenth year as king of Assyria, and third as king of Babylon, after spending some time in the latter city. Whilst he was at Calah, resting on his laurels—he did not again, himself, take the field—and from thence prosecuting the construction of his new residence of Dur-Sharrukin, not far from Nineveh, his armies had still to conduct two wars, one in the year 708, the other, perhaps, in the same, but probably in the following year. Urartu had to a certain extent recovered from the blows it had suffered in the defeats and death of its king, Rusas; and the new king, Argistis, began to grow restless, and persuaded Prince Mutallu of Kummukh to a revolt against the Assyrian domination. Sargon sent a high official with a powerful army and full royal authority, who put Mutallu to flight, taking the capital of the province, and so restoring the Assyrian dominion. The rich booty was sent to Calah to the king, and the latter placed a very strong garrison at the disposal of the new viceroy, to prevent any further attempts at risings, and at the same time to constitute a defence against Argistis. But it was once more apparent that the Assyrian Empire, as a purely military power, rested on a tottering foundation, and could only be sustained by continued wars and victories.

The other war was that for the succession in Ellipi to the north of Elam. There, after the death of Dalta, who after some resistance had become a loyal vassal of Assyria, a dispute over the inheritance broke out between his two sons, Nibe and Ishpabara. The first applied for help to Shutur-nankhundi of Elam; the second to Sargon. The latter sent seven of his commanders, who succeeded in defeating Nibe, taking his capital, Marubishti, and there installing Ishpabara as king.

Sargon, who, even in the early years of his reign, in the midst of his most terrible wars, had not neglected the reconstruction of palaces and temples at Nineveh and Calah, now devoted himself entirely to the realisation of a long cherished plan, whose execution he had begun long ago. A new suburb of Nineveh, called by his name, was to come into existence as a permanent[403] memorial of his fame and piety, and at the same time serve as a summer residence. This was Dur-Sharrukin with its temples to various gods, with its palaces and gardens, whose walls and gates, like those of a sacred city, looked to the four quarters of the heavens and were named after the high gods, and whose inhabitants, selected from the prisoners of war of all the nations whom the king had conquered and placed under Assyrian magistrates, afforded a living testimony to his mighty deeds. On the 22nd Tasrit (September) 707, the gods were solemnly introduced into their temples, and on the 6th Airu (April) of the following year, the king took possession of the new residence. He was not permitted to enjoy it long. In the year 705 he fell by an assassin’s hand. [This is doubted by some authorities, who believe that he died a natural death.]

Sargon was, without doubt, one of the greatest princes who sat on the throne of Assyria and Babylon. He was no mere conqueror, who thought merely of increasing the size of his empire, but also a true king who occupied himself for its welfare. What chiefly strikes us in him is the comparative moderation by which he was distinguished from his predecessors and in particular from his son and successor. The horrors and devastations of war were the inevitable accompaniment of the forcible subjugation of the whole of western Asia, and some obstinate rebels were punished according to the barbarous custom of his age and race. But in general he contented himself with expelling the conquered prince or making him prisoner. He also remained faithful to the policy first pursued by Tiglathpileser III, namely that of furthering the unity of the empire by transplanting whole populations to other districts. But in his records it is only now and then that we encounter the refined cruelties perpetrated by the other Assyrian kings, and he never dwells on them with so much complacency as they display.b

SENNACHERIB

Sargon II was succeeded by his son Sin-akhe-erba, the Sennacherib of the Bible, who reigned long and gloriously. The period now in question has a double interest. It is a time when Assyria is at the height of its power; and the interest that attaches to any strong empire is enhanced by the fact that the Assyrians of this period came in contact with the people of Israel. Sennacherib, in particular, bears a name familiar to all succeeding generations because of the repeated mention of this ruler in the Hebrew scriptures. Until the records of the Assyrian monuments were brought to light, nothing was known of him, except what referred to his disastrous campaign against Jerusalem, together with the brief reference to his murder by his son. Now, however, an abundance of material is at hand telling of the deeds of Sennacherib. The most important of these records are contained on large cylinders of the type which many Assyrian kings employed. These cylinders tell of various campaigns of the great conqueror, including several attacks upon Israel. Two or three brief excerpts from the chronicles of Sennacherib will serve to give an idea of the phraseology in which these royal documents are couched. The first two excerpts here selected were translated by George Smith from a cylinder now in the British Museum.

Column I of this cylinder begins as follows:

“Sennacherib the great king, the powerful king, king of Assyria, king of the four regions, the appointed ruler, worshipper of the great gods, guardian of right, lover of justice, maker of peace, going the right way,[404] preserver of good. The powerful prince, the warlike hero, leader among kings, giant devouring the enemy, breaker of bonds. Asshur, the great mountain, an empire unequalled, has committed to me, and over all who dwell in palaces has exalted my servants. From the upper sea of the setting sun to the lower sea of the rising sun all the dark races he has subdued to my feet, and stubborn kings avoided war, their countries abandoned, and, like Sudinni birds, … fled to desert places.”[26]

Column II contains a record of the campaign against the Hittites:

“In my third expedition to the land of the Hittites I went. Elulæus king of Sidon, fear of the might of my dominion overwhelmed him, and to a distance in the midst of the sea he fled, and his country I took. Great Sidon, Lesser Sidon, Bit-Sitte, Sarepta Machalliba, Ushu Alhzibu, and Akko his strong cities, fortresses, walled and enclosed, his castles; the might of the soldiers of Asshur my lord overwhelmed them, and they submitted to my feet. Tubahal in the throne of the kingdom over them I seated, and taxes and tribute to my dominion yearly, unceasing, I fixed upon him. Of Menahem of Samsimuruna, Tubahal of Sidon, Abdilihiti of Arvad, Urumilki of Gubal (Byblos), Mitinti of Ashdod, Buduilu of Beth-Ammon, Kammusunadab of Moab, Malikrammu of Edom, kings of the Hittites, all of them of the coast, the whole, their presents and furniture, to my presence they carried, and kissed my feet, and Zidqa, king of Askalon, who did not submit to my yoke; the gods of the house of his father, himself, his wife, his sons, his daughters, and his brothers, the seed of the house of his father I removed, and to Assyria I sent him. Sharruludari, son of Rukipti their former king, over the people of Askalon I appointed, and the gifts of taxes due to my dominion I fixed on him, and he performed my pleasure.”

Full of interest is the record of an invasion of Palestine. Sennacherib, it will be recalled, was the Assyrian that came down like a wolf on the fold, as recorded in Byron’s stirring lines. The Hebrew account is from 2 Kings xix. 35:

“And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.”a

[405]

It is hardly necessary to state that no such record as this is to be found on the cylinder before us. The oriental scribe, whether of Egypt, Assyria, or Persia, rarely made the mistake of putting details of unfortunate expeditions on record. Doubtless Sennacherib once invaded western Asia unsuccessfully, and quite likely a plague may have decimated his hosts, but that particular invasion is not likely to furnish a favourable theme for the court chronicler.

An invasion of Palestine is, indeed, recorded on the present cylinder, but it is an invasion with very different results. Listen to the official account of the conquest of Jerusalem furnished by this cylinder of Sennacherib, as translated by Dr. Budge. The scribe reports the king as speaking in the first person:

“I drew nigh to Ekron and I slew the governors and princes who had transgressed, and I hung upon poles round about the city their dead bodies; the people of the city who had done wickedly and had committed offences I counted as spoil, but those who had not done these things I pardoned. I brought their king, Padi, forth from Jerusalem and I stablished him upon the throne of dominion over them, and I laid tribute upon him.

“I then besieged Hezekiah of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke, and I captured forty-six of his strong cities and fortresses and innumerable small cities which were round about them, with the battering of rams and the assault of engines, and the attack of foot-soldiers, and by mines and breaches (made in the walls). I brought out therefrom 200,150 people, both small and great, male and female, and horses, and mules, and asses, and camels, and oxen, and innumerable sheep I counted as spoil. (Hezekiah) himself, like a caged bird, I shut up within Jerusalem his royal city. I threw up mounds against him, and I took vengeance upon any man who came forth from his city. His cities which I had captured I took from him and gave to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, and Padi, king of Ekron, and Silli-bel, king of Gaza, and I reduced his land. I added to their former yearly tribute, and increased the gifts which they paid unto me. The fear of the majesty of my sovereignty overwhelmed Hezekiah, and the Urbi and his trusty warriors, whom he had brought into his royal city of Jerusalem to protect it, deserted. And he despatched after me his messenger to my royal city Nineveh to pay tribute and to make submission with thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, eye paint … ivory couches and thrones, hides and tusks, precious woods, and divers objects, a heavy treasure, together with his daughters, and the women of his palace, and male and female musicians.”

It must not be supposed, however, that either this record of a successful invasion or the Hebrew account of that other disastrous one is altogether false, however much the facts may have been exaggerated, or however poetical the guise in which they are presented. It is merely to be understood that the two records refer to different campaigns or to different portions of the same campaign, as explained later by Professor Tiele. It is supposed by some modern interpreters that the destruction of Sennacherib’s hosts actually occurred through the plague. The king himself, however, escaped to return to Nineveh and there to continue his rule for many years. He was finally killed by his own sons, as is recorded on a contemporary Babylonian document. What would not the Hebrew scholar give, could he find contemporary documents of these events from the Hebrew standpoint, instead of being obliged to depend on records handed down, perhaps, by tradition for many generations, or at best, copied from one hand to another for centuries?

[406]

The value of contemporary documents as records of fact may, indeed, be overestimated, for it is possible to pervert, exaggerate, or understate the facts even in the day of their occurrence; but in any event the contemporary document has obvious advantage over documents of subsequent generations, which can be nothing more than copies, variously distorted, of earlier records. As for such mere matters of fact as the dates of ancient kings, and the particular details of campaigns and conquests, the historic importance of the contemporary record cannot be questioned; hence the enormous value of these tablets of Assyria and Babylon. But, questions of historical value aside, a peculiar charm attaches to whatever is old, and it is nothing less than fascinating to look at such a document as this cylinder, and feel that the very lines you scan were once read by Sennacherib himself before he met his untimely end “on the 20th day of the month Tebet” some twenty-five centuries ago.h

It was in the year 705 B.C. that Sennacherib, who was not, perhaps, entirely guiltless of Sargon’s death, mounted the throne and became the supreme king both in Babylon and Assyria. To Merodach-baladan, who may have been either the recognised king of the Sea Lands, or the son or namesake of the latter, the occasion now seemed favourable for recovering the throne lost to Sargon. Sennacherib and his army marched up in all haste, and though it appears that Merodach-baladan had all the Aramæan and Chaldean tribes on his side, and was moreover supported by Elamite auxiliaries, he suffered a defeat and so lost his kingdom. According to the Assyrian narrator, this defeat was so complete that the Chaldean was forced to take flight in the greatest haste, leaving behind him his whole baggage-train, as well as his family and court. He had reigned nine months. The land was heavily scourged, great and small towns were taken and laid waste, and the inhabitants dragged into exile. The same fate was meted out to all Arabians, Aramæans, and Chaldeans who were living in the Babylonian towns.

When the campaign in Chaldea was at an end, the troops were sent against the Aramæan tribes, which dwelt on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. Here, too, there was devastation and plundering. A considerable booty, as was to be expected from these nomads, consisting chiefly of cattle, but also including camels, fell into the hands of the conquerors, and no less than two hundred thousand men and women were carried off to Assyria as slaves. It fared still worse with one small, heroic tribe, the Hirimmi, who offered an obstinate resistance to the Assyrians. When, finally, the latter succeeded in overcoming them, of all the rebels they left no prisoner of war alive, and hanged the corpses on poles upon the wall surrounding the town. Sennacherib annexed the whole territory to his realm, while he laid on it a very moderate tax for the benefit of the Assyrian god.

We may assume it as probably certain that the king did not personally take part in the campaign, but occupied himself the while with the adjustment of Babylonian state affairs. His policy may be distinctly followed. It was only toward the Chaldeans and their allies that he appeared in the character of an enemy. They alone were punished or carried off. The actual citizens of Babylon, Erech, Nippur, Kish, and Kharsag-kalama he left unmolested, and to propitiate them still further, he even gave them a king belonging to the ruling Babylonian house—namely, the young Bel-ibni, whose father held an important office, and who had himself been brought up from childhood at the Assyrian court. Of him Sennacherib might hope that he would be faithful to Assyria and at the same time not unfriendly to the[407] Babylonians, and therefore he now bestowed on him the title of “King of Sumer and Accad.”

The establishment of order in Babylon was turned to account by Sennacherib for the purpose of averting the danger with which his eastern frontier was threatened by the nomads who wandered there, and by the mountain people, and also for extending his empire in every direction. He now attacked the Kasshu and Yasubigallu, by which names we doubtless have to understand those barbarous Kossæans, and their allies, whose successors, centuries later, according to Diodorus, still made the Mesopotamian frontier insecure, and who were related to those Kassites who had so long reigned over Babylon. Their surest protection was the inaccessible nature of the country. Steep mountain paths and thick forests made it difficult for an Assyrian army to advance, while for vehicles it was impossible.

The king himself led the march, and thus showed himself a worthy successor of the undaunted heroes who in earlier centuries had founded the Assyrian power. His chariot had frequently to be carried behind him, and then he mounted on horseback or performed the journey on foot at the head of his troops. Sennacherib succeeded in taking their three strongholds. The smaller places he laid in ashes and the nomads’ tents were burnt. But for greater security he desired to bring the wild tribes under Assyrian rule, and to force them to settle in fixed abodes. He selected Bit-Kilamzakh as a centre, fortified it far more effectually than before, making it a formidable fortress to keep the inhabitants of the country in check, and peopled it with captives whom he had carried off in former warlike expeditions. He caused a tablet inscribed with the history of this campaign to be set up in the capital, in order that the terror of the Assyrian arms might be kept perpetually alive. As soon as he had subdued the Kasshu he marched against Ellipi. Sennacherib fell on the country like a tempest. The two royal seats Marubishti and Accudu, with all the smaller towns, were taken by him and given up to be plundered and burnt, whilst all crops were destroyed and even the cornfields delivered over to the fire. It was with a certain satisfaction that Sennacherib boasted of having transformed Ellipi into a desert, and led away the whole population with its goods and chattels. When these successes became known, a number of Median princes, dwelling at a more remote distance, hastened to offer their submission.

Meantime the king’s attention was directed to events in the west. The elevation of the young and high-spirited Tirhaqa to the throne of Egypt, probably as husband of King Shabak’s widow, and guardian of his son who was a minor, had aroused in some princes of the strips of land along the Mediterranean coast the hope that by an alliance with him they might shake off the Assyrian yoke. To these belonged Elulæus (Luli) king of Tyre and Sidon, Zedekiah, (Zidga) king of Askalon, and above all Hezekiah, the king of Judah. The latter took on himself the leadership, at least in the southwest.

Sennacherib’s third campaign was directed against this coalition, and is probably to be assigned to the year 702 B.C. With its usual promptitude, the Assyrian army marched on Phœnicia, and thus attacked one of the allies before the rest had a chance to unite their forces. Elulæus fled in haste to Cyprus, where Citium still belonged to him; and all his towns on the continent, within a short space of time, fell into the hands of the Assyrian. All the princes of the other petty Phœnician states came that they might offer their submission.

Sennacherib immediately starts along the seacoast for Askalon, southernmost of the revolted states, and soon overpowers it. Zedekiah, the king,[408] suffers the usual fate; with the hereditary gods of his house, his wife, his sons, daughters, brothers, and his whole family he is dragged away to Assyria.

Now that the whole coast-line had submitted, Sennacherib turned to Ekron, which lay farther to the north, but more inland. But in Altaku [Eltekeh], which lay south of Ekron and belonged to it, he encountered some resistance, and was at the same time caught by an Egyptian army, which at last appeared to the rescue of the Philistine towns. According to the Assyrian account it was very numerous and was composed of the troops of the king of Musuri, and of the bowmen, chariots, and horses of the king of Melukhkha. Still, whatever these two names may mean here, it is certain that neither Tirhaqa himself nor any other Egyptian king was leading the army, but that it was merely commanded by Egyptian princes and two generals belonging to the horsemen. These did not show themselves a match for the powerful Assyrian conqueror. In spite of the number of their followers they suffered a total defeat, and it does not say much for their skill and courage that they all, princes and commanders, fell alive into the enemy’s hands. In consequence of this, the relieving army appears to have retraced its march to Egypt, so that nothing now stood in the way of Sennacherib continuing his conquests in Philistia and Canaan. The ruling high priest and the princes who had stirred up the rebellion, he caused to be put to death and their corpses displayed on stakes on the town walls; such of the inhabitants as had made common cause with the rebels were led away captive; the innocent, on the contrary, went free.

Now at last came the turn of Hezekiah. The following is the main outline of what the Assyrians relate concerning the campaign against Judah. When it became apparent that even after the overthrow of his allies, Hezekiah was not inclined to give himself up readily to the mercy of his powerful enemy, the latter marched into his country. Forty strong towns besides the citadels and countless smaller places were beleaguered, taken by storm, razed to the ground or burned, and more than two hundred thousand prisoners, with a great number of horses, asses, and camels were carried away from them. Hezekiah himself, Sennacherib shut up in his capital, Jerusalem (Ursalimmu), like “a bird in its cage.” But the town was in a strong position and provided with a good garrison. Hezekiah had not only assembled his faithful warriors, but had also enlisted a number of Arabian soldiers. When these, however, required pay, and in case of refusal threatened to withdraw, Hezekiah—the Assyrian says from dread of the glory of Asshur—paid the heavy tribute which Sennacherib demanded of him—namely, thirty talents of gold [about £9000 or $45,000] and three hundred talents of silver, besides precious stones, woods, and other articles, and also sent to Nineveh his daughters and the women of the palace, accompanied by male and female slaves together with an envoy, who was at the same time commissioned to proffer his master’s homage.

From this narrative no one who did not know the official style of the Assyrian historical writers would guess that Jerusalem was not taken, and that Sennacherib, with the remainder of his army, was obliged to quit Judah with all possible speed. But it was not their business to report failures of this kind. Doubtless in this account of the course of Sennacherib’s campaign, the main features are correct and also described in the right chronological order. It is certain that, after the overthrow of Phœnicia, the king found it advisable first to reduce the small Philistine states on the seacoast to obedience that he might then attack the Jewish king, who at last, when[409] he had been deprived of everything save his capital, and when his own soldiers were deserting him, saw himself compelled to produce the war-tax demanded. The assertion that he sent it by an envoy to Nineveh cannot possibly be correct, and must have been invented for the purpose of rounding off the narrative without relating the true issue of the affair.

We possess two traditions concerning the close of the war which, though they may differ from one another in other respects, agree in this, that an extraordinary event unexpectedly compelled Sennacherib to return with some precipitation to Assyria. One is the biblical tradition; the other is the account of Herodotus.b

The biblical account, as found in 2 Kings, we have already quoted. The account of Herodotus relates to a certain king Sethos, a priest of Vulcan (believed to represent Shabak of the XXVth Dynasty). This king, says Herodotus, treated the military of Egypt with extreme contempt, and as if he had no occasion for their services. Among other indignities he deprived them of their aruræ, or fields of fifty feet square, which, by way of reward, his predecessors had given to each soldier; the result was that, when Sennacherib, king of Arabia and Assyria, attacked Egypt with a mighty army, the warriors whom he had thus treated refused to assist him. In this perplexity the priest retired to the shrine of his god, before which he lamented his danger and misfortunes; here he sunk into a profound sleep, and his deity promised him, in a dream, that if he marched to meet the Assyrians, he should experience no injury, for that he would furnish him with assistance. The vision inspired him with confidence; he put himself at the head of his adherents and marched to Pelusium, the entrance of Egypt: not a soldier accompanied the party, which was entirely composed of tradesmen and artisans. On their arrival at Pelusium, so immense a number of mice infested by night the enemy’s camp that their quivers and bows, together with what secured their shields to their arms, were gnawed in pieces. In the morning the Arabians, finding themselves without arms, fled in confusion, and lost great numbers of their men. There is now to be seen in the temple of Vulcan a marble statue of this king, having a mouse in his hand, and with this inscription, “Whoever thou art, learn, from my fortune, to reverence the gods.”c

Taking together all the circumstances in which the somewhat contradictory reports are agreed, we may picture the course of events as follows: On the advance of the Assyrian king, Hezekiah collects his picked men, who are reinforced by foreign soldiers, in his capital, and resolves to defend it. Meantime the Assyrian army overruns the whole of Judah, takes one fortified town after another, and all the citadels and smaller places, and Sennacherib has penetrated as far as Libnah, a small town lying in the southwest of the Jewish territory. There he learns that Tirhaqa is approaching with an Egyptian army, to fight against him and liberate Judah. So long as the capital is not yet in his power, and Judah consequently not wholly subdued, he cannot go out against him without losing all the advantages gained. He will therefore try whether he cannot, by threatening Hezekiah, induce him to deliver up the town of his own accord; and he sends him messengers with letters peremptorily calling on him to submit. But with prophetic fire Isaiah pours out his wrath at the insults offered to Jehovah by this servant of Asshur, and vehemently urges steadfast resistance.

Sennacherib meantime continues his victorious march, and now that he is master of all Judah with the sole exception of the capital, he can detach a part of his army. If Hezekiah will not yield of his own free will he must[410] be compelled to do so. A strong body of troops under the leadership of the Rabshakeh, or generalissimo, marched against the strong fortress and closely beset it on all sides. But it is the Rabshakeh who chiefly figures in the foreground of the affair. The Hebrews tell of his efforts to induce the people and the garrison of Jerusalem to desert their king. He sought to attain this end by means of scornful speeches on the helplessness of Judah.

Hezekiah, perhaps again spurred on by Isaiah, who still continues to trust in a miraculous deliverance, does not give way at once, but defends the city against a superior foe for some time, though it was the only town that remained to him and was as isolated and forsaken “as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.” But at last, when famine in the town has reached its highest pitch and signs of impatience and discontent manifest themselves among the garrison, he makes up his mind to submission, and sends a messenger to Lachish to inquire the terms of surrender. They are very hard. But there is no longer any choice, and he tenders the Assyrian conquerors the amount required at the hand of the envoy, who subsequently accompanied it to Nineveh. Whether the siege was thereupon immediately raised, or whether it was thought well to keep the town still under observation until the contest with Egypt was decided, we cannot say positively. But, as a great misfortune, either pestilence or some other natural phenomenon, actually did soon after smite the Assyrian army, and the whole of the conqueror’s force, reduced to a miserable handful, quitted Judah and the West, the true believers among the Egyptians and Israelites saw in it a miraculous deliverance which the gods had sent them, and the latter at the same time regarded it as a fulfilment of the prophecies of Isaiah, which at first did not seem to be coming true.

Of course the event had not in reality the importance which the grateful Egyptians and Israelites attributed to it. Although it secured them relief, and Sennacherib’s army was so weakened that he thought it advisable to beat a hasty retreat, yet his supremacy over Phœnicia and Canaan remained for a long time unshaken, and in the following year he was again in the field with a powerful army. Subsequently he appears again to have marched westward and to have made a particular fight against Arabia and Edom. But it does not appear that in this campaign he also made war against Phœnicia, Philistia, and Judah, as he certainly would not have failed to do had traces of insubordination showed themselves. The chastisement had been too severe, and the country was too greatly exhausted.

In the year 700 B.C. Sennacherib’s presence was again required in Babylonia. It was the third and last year of Bel-ibni’s rule at Babylon. Sennacherib had him brought to Assyria, together with his whole family. He had proved unequal to the task which Sennacherib had assigned him.

After the victories, which intimidated even Elam, Sennacherib went to Babylon, and there in place of Bel-ibni, set up his own eldest son Asshur-nadin-shum on the throne as king of Sumer and Accad. His six years’ reign began in the year 700 B.C., and now Sennacherib thought himself safe from the machinations of Chaldean pretenders.

For some years he had really had his hands free in the south. He employed the time in bringing into subjection some of the northwestern neighbours of his empire. This campaign, which the Assyrians reckon as the fifth, and which must have taken place somewhere between 699 and 696, ended with a war in Cilicia. According to Berosus it was occasioned by a Greek invasion, and the Assyrian army obtained the victory only after suffering great loss. Abydenus even speaks of a sea-fight on the Cilician coast,[411] in which the Greek fleet was worsted. Both historians agree in this, that Sennacherib immortalised his famous deeds by the erection of his statue or the setting up of bronze pillars with inscriptions, and that he built the town of Tarsus, which he called Tharsin, so that the Cydnus flowed through it as the Arazanes (Aralshtu) through Babylon. Strange as it may seem, the Assyrians themselves make no mention of the foundation of this important town, but Berosus is too credible a witness for his statement to be rejected.

Even before 694 Sennacherib had busied himself in the preparations of a great plan. Merodach-baladan had sought and found in Nagitu, on the coast of Elam, a refuge and place of security where he believed his deadly enemy could not reach him. After the latter’s expedition against Bit-Yakin in the year 700, the remainder of the population of that territory had found it expedient to take ships with their gods, as their master had done, and cross to the region where the latter had taken up his abode. Sennacherib apparently feared that this new state would prove a source of danger to the province entrusted to his son; all the more since Merodach-baladan had now become a vassal of Elam, Asshur’s ancient and hereditary enemy. The difficulty was great, particularly as Nagitu was not accessible from the land side, without passing through Elamite territory. He had among his captives shipbuilders from Khatti, and he set them to work at Nineveh on the Tigris and Tel-Barsip on the Euphrates. The ships were towed down the Euphrates and the Tigris [or they may have been transported overland by camels]. They were manned by Tyrian, Sidonian, and Ionic seamen, who were also prisoners of war. He, himself, had meantime marched to the Persian Gulf with his army, and had fixed his camp close to the ships. From the description of the voyage it is evident what a deep impression this very unusual expedition made on the Assyrians. Even before they set sail they made an unexpected acquaintance with the sea, which they believed four hours’ distance away; they may perhaps have been aware that, even so far up as Bab-Salimeti, the river was subject to the ebb and flow; but a spring flood, which suddenly laid the camp under water, and even made its way into the royal tent, took them by surprise. They had to seek refuge on the ships and remain on them five days and nights, “as in a great bird-cage,” says Sennacherib. Whether this experience of life on shipboard was enough for the bold monarch, or whether he had no intention of taking part in the maritime expedition, it is certain that he did not leave the shore. The transports were taken to the mouth of the Euphrates; costly sacrifices to Ea, the sea god, among which were a golden ship and a golden fish, were thrown into the rivers to obtain his protection for the fleet, and then it set sail. It is not told how long the voyage lasted, but merely that the country whither they went lay at the mouth of the Eulæus (Ulai), the chief river of Elam. There the great battle was fought, and of course the Assyrians came off the victors. They took possession of various Elamite towns, and carried off the Chaldeans and all the goods from Bit-Yakin, together with a number of Aramæans and captured ships, to Bab-Salimeti, where the king awaited them. Of Merodach-baladan not a word is said. Therefore he did not fall into the hands of the Assyrians, and was not robbed of his sovereignty by the defeat. Thus far, at least, the victory was of no lasting significance for the Assyrians. It appears simply to have destroyed the prosperity of the Chaldean colony for some time, and to have deterred the indefatigable adversary from direct attacks. But this extraordinary and costly expedition shows how greatly he was dreaded and with what implacable hatred his house was pursued by that of Sargon.

[412]

While the Assyrian king was engaged in the seacoast war, Khallus, the king of Elam, instigated by the Babylonians who had left the town in good time with Merodach-baladan and had sought refuge with him, invaded Accad with his army, penetrated as far as Sippar, where he instituted a massacre, and brought Asshur-nadin-shum prisoner to Elam. On the Babylonian throne he set up a Babylonian, Suzub, son of Gakhul. It is a characteristic trait that the Assyrian account is silent as to the unhappy fate which overtook Sennacherib’s oldest son. Suzub, on his accession to the throne, took the name of Negal-ushezib. He is the Regebelos of the Ptolemaic Canon, and must be carefully distinguished from the Chaldean Suzub who did not reign over Babylon till a later date (692) and under another name.

But the new king was lord over only part of the country. The whole South was still in the hands of the Assyrians and had to be conquered by him.

About June, 694 or 693, he succeeded in getting possession of Nippur, but his farther advance was checked by the tidings that the Assyrians had meantime marched as far as Erech. Sennacherib immediately despatched a large force against the king of Elam, whom he rightly regarded as the chief author of all the trouble. Erech fell and was sacked, and, laden with rich booty, including even the chief gods of the sacred city, the Assyrians marched forward. At Nippur, Nergal-ushezib awaited them, and in the battle which followed he remained victor. But his rule was of short duration. As to the end of his reign the Babylonian and Assyrian records are agreed. The former asserts that, after the Assyrians had carried away the gods and inhabitants of Erech, Nergal-ushezib was taken prisoner in the battle at Nippur and conducted to Assyria. According to the second, he was thrown from his horse in the battle, taken prisoner and brought in chains before Sennacherib, who then shut him up in prison at the gate of Nineveh. The two accounts seem to make the story complete.

After the misfortune that had overtaken their king, the Babylonians bestowed the crown on Suzub the Chaldean, who had also fled to Elam. He reigned independently for four years, under the name of Mushezib-Marduk. The Assyrians consequently content themselves with mentioning several advantages won by them over the Elamites, and also relating that they took Suzub prisoner on their march from Erech to Asshur. They themselves practically acknowledged that Babylon did not fall into their hands, when they inform us that, after Suzub’s capture, the Babylonians closed their city gates against the Assyrians and offered an obstinate resistance.

So far as we may judge, the whole of this campaign of Sennacherib’s was a political blunder, which does not speak well for his sagacity. There was in fact nothing to be feared from Merodach-baladan; the real peril, which threatened from Elam, escaped the Assyrian king. The maritime expedition undertaken at so much labour and expense, was more adventurous than glorious, and failed in its main object: the arch enemy, at whom it was aimed, retained his liberty and his kingdom. And meantime Babylon was left without protection, and Sennacherib’s own son was bereft of throne and freedom. He had not even provided himself with sufficient forces to avenge the descent of the Elamites and reconquer the lost territory. The sole fruit of the campaign (exclusive of booty and prisoners) was the carrying away of a Babylonian king, whose place was at once taken by another prince, not less hostile. A poor compensation for the loss of the capital, the whole territory belonging to it and of his own son! Under Sennacherib’s government it was continually apparent that only under compulsion had the[413] Babylonians submitted to the yoke of the Assyrians, and that they preferred to unite with Elam rather than again obey a Sargonid.

In Elam, meantime, a rising took place against Khallus, possibly because he had been unsuccessful in his war against Assyria. [He was killed in the uprising.] Kudur-nankhundi became king in his stead. Sennacherib thought this a favourable opportunity to attack his old enemies, the Elamites. It was in 692, probably, that he took advantage of Elam’s disordered condition to inflict a heavy punishment on that country. From Rasa to Bit-Burnaki he ravaged and plundered to his heart’s content. He introduced Assyrian garrisons and placed the territory under the care of a governor. Besides this, he took thirty-five fortified towns. Such was the devastation “that the smoke of the flames covered the face of the wide heaven like a heavy storm,” and so great was the terror he spread that Kudur-nankhundi left his residence at Madaktu in all haste, and fled to a town called Khaidala, which lay far up in the mountains. But nature saved him from the hands of the Assyrians. Sennacherib did indeed give orders to march to Madaktu, but he could not carry his intention into effect. It was winter, and in (Tebet) December an earthquake, coupled with storms of rain and snow, compelled him to retreat. The mountain streams were so swollen that no army could now cross them with safety. Only three months afterwards Kudur-nankhundi died “suddenly, before his time,” and his own brother Umman-minanu mounted the throne. Scarcely had Umman-minanu assumed the sceptre of Elam than he allowed himself to be beguiled into an alliance with Babylon against Asshur. At Babylon now reigned Suzub II, the Chaldean, Mushezib-Marduk. After his flight from Sennacherib, in the year 700 or 699, he had returned to Babylon, where, after the misfortunes that overtook his namesake, he was made king, no doubt to the great chagrin of the Assyrians. When he sent gold and silver from the treasury of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk and Zarpanit, to the Elamite king, he found the latter prepared to collect an army at once and march with it to Babylon for a joint attack upon Asshur. Sennacherib was astounded that the lesson he had imparted to Elam in the previous year had borne no better fruit. But the Chaldeans and Elamites had good ground to hope for success. The Assyrian’s latest victories had not been rich in lasting results. He had not succeeded in conquering Babylon. He had been obliged to retreat hastily from Elam. He had not been able to defend Chaldea. Moreover, the kings of Babylon and Elam could now count on a number of allies. The number of the enemy impressed the Assyrians, who likened them to a swarm of locusts. “Like a violent gale which drives the rain-clouds across the firmament, so rose the cloud of dust at their approach.” But calling on the gods, his heavenly protectors, Sennacherib ventures an attack.

It was a fierce battle; both sides fought with the greatest fury. Sennacherib, himself, was distinguished by his personal courage. With helm and mail, spear and bow, Asshur’s sacred bow, which none but the kings of Assyria carried, he stands in his war chariot like an angry lion, and like a heavy storm from Adad, the god of tempests, he rushes on the enemy, covering the plain with corpses as with grass. His horses wallow in blood; blood and fragments of the slain cleave to the pole of his war chariot. A choice troop of Elamite nobles, equipped with golden daggers and bracelets, are slaughtered like sheep, and the Elamite commander and grand vizier, Khumbanundash, a man of great ability, also falls. Others are taken prisoners. Yet the kings of Elam and Babylon and the Chaldean chiefs got away, according to the Assyrian writer, who delights in depicting their[414] sufferings in a very imaginative fashion, with a loss of tents and baggage and of one hundred and fifty thousand dead left on the battle-field. They were pursued for a distance of some miles, but their capture was not effected. There is something loathsome in the lively colours in which the scene is painted; the pitiless slaughter and horrible mutilation of the slain are described with bloodthirsty complacency. The writer of the Assyrian tablet knew well that his savage, revengeful master based his renown on such inhuman acts. And yet it was no victory for the Assyrians. They may have remained in possession of the field, but the murderous battle was so undecisive that the Elamites and Babylonians could claim the victory as well. The losses on both sides must have been so great that neither of the two parties ventured to continue the war. Both sides assumed the attitude of waiting for a more favourable opportunity. The prevalent idea that after the battle of Khalule Sennacherib immediately conquered Babylon is decidedly false and is contradicted by the true reading of both Assyrian and Babylonian records.

Not till the year 690 or 689 did Sennacherib find a favourable opportunity to risk another attack on Babylon. From Elam there was now nothing more to fear. The power of Umman-minanu was much weakened and he was soon to lose it altogether. The Assyrian king marched on Babylon with the impetuousity which distinguished all his warlike expeditions, and was at times disadvantageous to him; and on this occasion his effort was crowned with the desired success. Now he directed his arms against Mushezib-Marduk’s town, not as his predecessors, including his own father, had done, as a rescuer bringing deliverance from a usurper and therefore striking at the latter and his dependents, and sparing the inhabitants: upon the town which had so long withstood him, so repeatedly and obstinately lifted its head against him, a fearful vengeance was to be taken. It was literally wiped out; nothing was spared; corpses lay piled up in the streets; all its treasures were pillaged and divided amongst the soldiers; the temples were desecrated, and the gods torn from their sanctuaries. Then the whole town was delivered up to the flames; the walls and ramparts, the temples and the ziggurat, (probably the two towers of Babylon and Borsippa), were thrown down and hurled into the Arakhtu or other canals, and the water from the river and the canals was turned on the ruins that they might be flooded. The very place where the sacred town had stood became unrecognisable and was changed into a marsh. Mushezib-Marduk escaped and sought refuge in Elam, but Umman-minanu, fearing Assyrian vengeance, surrendered his ally, and the latter and his family were brought prisoners to Nineveh.

Such a deed may well have spread fear and horror even in Assyria itself. Sennacherib had done what none had even ventured before. Towards the town which many an Assyrian king had treated with respect and which had never been sacked, he had behaved with a relentlessness which hitherto had only been exhibited to foreign rebels. He was now master of Babylon. For the remaining eight years of his life, he was called King of Babylon, even according to the Babylonian list of kings, although the Ptolemaic canon mentions this period as an interim. King Ummanaldash [Khumba-Khaldashu] who (the 7th of Adar 690 or 689?) succeeded Umman-minanu on the throne of Elam, and who reigned eight years, left the Assyrian king in peaceful possession. There are sufficient grounds for the assumption that this supremacy over Babylon of a tyrant embittered by earlier reverses was a reign of terror.

For the last years of Sennacherib’s reign authentic accounts are almost[415] entirely wanting. An expedition to Arabia, against a certain king Hazael (Khazailu), in which the capital of Edom is stormed and the deity of the place falls into his hands, certainly belongs to this period of his reign.

Like most of the Assyrian princes, Sennacherib, in spite of his unsettled existence, was a great builder. But he bestowed the most care on the re-establishment and embellishment of his beloved Nineveh. In the earlier part of his reign he had also strengthened this town with an outer wall and an inner rampart (duru and shalkhu), and in the year 695 he had built a great palace by the northwest wall, after pulling down a small palace which stood there. The latter had fallen into decay, partly as a result of the overflowings of the canal on which it stood, partly from the heat of the sun. The canal was now diverted, and on its margin was built a new and loftier palace, in which ivory and costly woods were not spared. There the king had a park laid out and irrigated by the waters of the Khushur (Khosr) which were made to flow through it, and it was planted with trees from the Amanus Mountains. At the same time the town was extended and embellished.

Scarcely was this structure completed when Sennacherib caused another palace, which lay farther south of the same wall, to be pulled down. It had served former kings as armoury, magazine, and stables, and had now become not only too small but also decayed. Some fields were added to it and earth brought to raise them, and upon this now rose a palace, not of tiles, but of hewn stone after the fashion of the land of Khatti (Aram). For this also cedars from Amanus and great lion and animal colossi, which had been hewn out of stone in the town of Baladai and then cased in bronze, were employed, and cunning architects disposed them with great care and magnificence. The purpose of the building remained the same; horses and every sort of cattle found stabling, stuffs and weapons were laid up there, but it had now also to serve as a barrack for the national troops. The king’s name is displayed on every wall.

Immediately after the completion of this building on the 20th day of Adar, 691, that is, in the same year in which the battle of Khalule took place, Sennacherib began another and not less important work, which was only completed and inaugurated after the sack of Babylon. This was an undertaking intended to provide the city of Nineveh with good drinking water. A number of canals had to be dug, which served at the same time to fertilise some uncultivated strips of land. In the capital which was thus, as it were, born again, the old warrior now probably rested on his laurels for a few years longer.

In the latter period of his life, Sennacherib appears to have handed over a part of his royal functions to his son Esarhaddon (Asshur-akhe-iddin), if he did not actually make him co-ruler. The latter was not his eldest son, for his name, “Asshur grants brothers, or, a brother,” shows the contrary, but he was perhaps, the second, and therefore direct heir to the throne after the death, or at least in the absence of, the king’s eldest son, Asshur-nadin-shum, who had been carried off by the Elamites. Esarhaddon was certainly destined to the succession by his father, and was the latter’s favourite. Sennacherib issued a decree by which the whole of his booty brought from the Babylonio-Chaldean district of Bit-Amukkani was assigned to him, and his name was at the same time changed to Asshur-etilli-ukinnibal (Asshur, the lord has lent a son)—a name which was more appropriate for one who now took the place of eldest son, but which Esarhaddon himself does not appear to have adopted. His brothers, whether younger or older, were not pleased at this. Two of them at least, Sharezer, whose full name was probably Nergal-shar-usur[416] (or the Nergilus of Berosus), and Adarmalik, disputed the succession, taking advantage of the circumstance that Esarhaddon, at the head of the army, was absent in the northwest, most probably in a war with Armenia. Whilst Sennacherib was praying in a temple, they fell on him and slew him, and Nergal-shar-usur took possession of the throne, [but was at once superseded. Some histories deny his accession]. Thus died Sennacherib, on the 20th Tebet (about December) 681, by the hands of his own sons.

From the official sources, which are the only ones we possess, it is difficult to obtain an idea of the character of the Assyrian sovereign, but the records of Sennacherib’s reign certainly make a far more unfavourable impression than those which Sargon left behind. Both were conquerors, but the one shows more respect for law and justice. Stern, at times to harshness, against uncompromising adversaries, Sargon yet gives place to mildness where mercy can be made to harmonise with the interests of the empire. Sennacherib, on the other hand, takes an obvious delight in scenes of blood and desolation, in inflicting punishments which only awaken disgust at their brutish cruelty. The destruction of Babylon, the burning and blotting out of a town venerable from its age and importance, and so sacred to the pious Assyrians, was indeed a blind vengeance which fixes an indelible blot on the name of the author of the crime. Not less courageous and warlike than his predecessors, he was rash and presumptuous rather than bold, and his plans were rather venturesome than well calculated. Impetuous in attack, he neglected the needful precautions, and attained the immediate goal, often only to lose more than he gained. Whether he was concerned in his father’s murder cannot be determined; that he was, as his name indicates, a younger son, is no certain evidence of this, but it is a suspicious circumstance that he nowhere mentions his celebrated father’s name. If he was guilty, Nemesis overtook him. As a king he was far inferior to Sargon. Nineveh alone had much to thank him for. Babylon, on the contrary, which had called in Sargon as her deliverer, sought to secure her independence of him, and preferred to his yoke the dearly bought protection of Elam. After he died, having reigned something like twenty-four years, it was a long time before the empire was as powerful and flourishing as at the commencement of his rule. In thinking of Sargon and Sennacherib we are involuntarily reminded of Cyrus and Cambyses, who differed from one another in the same way.b

ESARHADDON AND ASSHURBANAPAL

Sennacherib, as we have seen, was murdered by his sons. It appears that this event did not occur at once after the return from the disastrous campaign against the Israelites, as might be inferred from the Hebrew record, but a good many years later. Esarhaddon, who succeeded his father, was obliged to win back the kingdom from the regicides before he could securely occupy the throne of Assyria. He seems to have had no great difficulty in this, however, and for many years he continued in undisputed sway, not merely sustaining but extending the influence that his father had wielded. The greatest glory of his reign was his successful invasion of Egypt. Opinions have differed considerably as to the character of Esarhaddon. Professor Tiele’s verdict, which we give in extenso later, is somewhat less favourable than that of various other authorities. The opinion of Professor Maspero is perhaps worth quoting in some detail. He says:

“Esarhaddon is one of the finest and most attractive characters of Assyrian history. He was as active and resolute as Asshurnazirpal or Tiglathpileser,[417] without being hard on his subjects or cruel to those he conquered, as they were. He delighted in being merciful as much as his predecessors had rejoiced in being merciless, and the accounts of his wars no longer make constant mention of captives being burnt alive, kings impaled on the gates of their cities, or whole populations being burnt out by fire. He took pleasure in restoring the ruins with which his father and grandfather had covered the land, and in the first year of his reign he gave orders for the rebuilding of Babylon, which was commenced on a grand scale.

“All the Chaldean prisoners were set free, and those who liked to work under the architects could do so for payment in oil, wine, honey, and other commodities of life; and when laying the foundation stones of different edifices, he himself wore the special dress of the masons. The temple of Bit-Zaggaton, the seat of Marduk, the protector of the town, issued from the ruins and the walls, and royal castles were raised beyond their former height. Beyond Babylon Esarhaddon consecrated thirty-six temples at Asshur and Agade; and they were lined with shining sheets of gold and silver.

“The palace which he built at Nineveh on the site of an old building surpassed all that had hitherto been seen. The quarries of alabaster in the mountains of Gordyene and the forests of Phœnicia furnished material for the halls; thirty-two Hittite kings on the Mediterranean coast sent great beams of pines, cedars, and cypresses. The roof was made of carved cedar wood, supported by columns of cypress encircled with gold and silver; stone lions and bulls stood at the doorways; the panels of the doors were made of ebony and cypress, encrusted with iron, silver, and ivory. The palace of Babylon was entirely destroyed, and the one commenced at Calah with Egyptian booty was never finished. The conquerors had been much impressed by the long avenues of sphinxes at the entrance of the Memphite temples, and in imitation of the idea Esarhaddon had sphinxes, lions, and bulls at the entrances of his buildings. The construction lasted three years (671-669), and it was only just far enough completed for the decoration to be started, when he fell seriously ill in 669.” Two years later he died.

It will probably be felt by most readers of the records left by Esarhaddon himself—which are, of course, our sole authority in the matter, save for a few chance biblical references—that Professor Maspero’s verdict as just quoted is over-enthusiastic. Nevertheless, it can hardly be doubted that Esarhaddon was in many ways a much more admirable character than his father. The following excerpt from one of Esarhaddon’s inscriptions, contained on a hexagonal prism of baked clay found near Nineveh, and now in the British Museum, will suggest something as to the precise interpretation one should place upon the words “attractive” and “merciful” as applied to an Assyrian conqueror:

“Esarhaddon, king of Sumer and Accad, (son of Sennacherib, king of) Assyria, (son of Sargon) king of Assyria, (who in the name of Asshur, Bel,) the Moon, the Sun, Nabu Marduk, Ishtar of Nineveh, and Ishtar of Arbela, the great gods his lords from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun marched victorious without a rival.

“Conqueror of the city of Sidon, which is on the sea, sweeper away of all its villages; its citadel and residence I rooted up, and into the sea I flung them. Its place of justice I destroyed. Abd-milkot its king who away from my arms into the middle of the sea had fled; like a fish from out of the sea I caught him, and cut off his head. His treasure, his goods, gold and silver[418] and precious stones, skins of elephants, teeth of elephants, dan wood, ku wood, cloths, dyed purple and yellow, of every description, and the regalia of his palace I carried off as my spoil. Men and women without number, oxen and sheep and mules, I swept them all off to Assyria. I assembled the kings of Syria and the seacoast, all of them. (The city of Sidon) I built anew, and I called it ‘The City of Esarhaddon.’ Men, captured by my arms, natives of the lands and seas of the East, within it I placed to dwell, and I set my own officers in authority over them.

“And Sanduarri king of Kundu and Sizu, an enemy and heretic, not honouring my majesty, who had abandoned the worship of the gods trusted to his rocky stronghold and Abd-milkot king of Sidon took for his ally. The names of the great gods side by side he wrote and to their power he trusted; but I trusted to Asshur, my lord. Like a bird from out of the mountains I took him, and I cut off his head. I wrought the judgment of Asshur my lord on the men who were criminals. The heads of Sanduarri and Abd-milkot by the side of those of their chiefs I hung up: and with captives young and old, male and female, to the gate of Nineveh I marched.

“Trampler on the heads of the men of Khilakki and Duhuka, who dwell in the mountains, which front the land of Tabal, who trusted to their mountains and from days of old never submitted to my yoke: twenty-one of their strong cities and smaller towns in their neighbourhood I attacked, captured, and carried off the spoil; I ruined, destroyed, and burnt them with fire. The rest of the men, who crimes and murders had not committed, I only placed the yoke of my empire heavily upon them.”

It is notable that the successor of Esarhaddon, his son Asshurbanapal, seems to have placed the same favourable opinion upon the character of his father, as compared with his grandfather Sennacherib, that moderns are disposed to adjudge. This is suggested by the fact that Asshurbanapal in various inscriptions refers to “Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, the father, my begetter,” and never to his grandfather, whom he probably would have mentioned, following custom, had he held him in any particular regard. Asshurbanapal himself was, at least in his earlier years, a warrior of no mean quality; but he was, it would appear, primarily a lover of the arts of peace. There is a marked difference in the tone of his inscriptions, as compared with those of his predecessors, even when describing his conquests. Many times they suggest one who loves the pleasures of life rather than one who gloats over the infliction of death. The following are the words in which he describes the expedition against Egypt and Ethiopia, and against Tyre, as recorded on a cylinder now preserved in the British Museum:

“In my second expedition to Egypt and Ethiopia I directed the march. Tandamani [Tanut-Amen] of the progress of my expedition heard, and that I had crossed over the borders of Egypt. Memphis he abandoned, and to save his life he fled into Thebes. The kings, prefects, and governors, whom in Egypt I had set up, to my presence came, and kissed my feet. After Tandamani the road I took, I went to Thebes the strong city. The approach of my powerful army he saw, and Thebes he abandoned, and fled to Kipkip. That city (Thebes) the whole of it, in the service of Asshur and Ishtar, my hands took; silver, gold, precious stones, the furniture of his palace, all there was, garments of wool and linen, great horses, people male and female, two lofty obelisks covered with beautiful carving, two thousand five hundred talents (over ninety tons) their weight, standing before the gate of a temple, from their places I removed and brought to Assyria. The spoil great and unnumbered, I carried off from the midst of Thebes. Over Egypt and[419] Ethiopia, my soldiers I caused to march, and I acquired glory. With a full hand peacefully I returned to Nineveh, the city of my dominion.

“In my third expedition against Baal, king of Tyre, dwelling in the midst of the sea, I went; who my royal will disregarded, and did not hear the words of my lips. Towers round him I raised, on sea and land his roads I took, their spirits I humbled and caused to melt away, to my yoke I made them submissive. The daughter proceeding from his body and the daughters of his brothers, for concubines he brought to my presence. Yahimelek his son, the glory of the country, of unsurpassed renown, at once he sent forward to make obeisance to me. His daughter and the daughters of his brothers with their great dowries I received. Favour I granted him, and the son proceeding from his body, I restored and gave him. Yakinlu, king of Arvad, dwelling in the midst of the sea, who to the kings my fathers was not submissive, submitted to my yoke. His daughter with many gifts, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought, and kissed my feet. Mukallu, king of Tabal, who against the kings my fathers made attacks, the daughter proceeding from his body, and her great dowry, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought, and kissed my feet. Over Mukallu great horses an annual tribute I fixed upon him. Sandasharme of Cilicia, who to the kings my fathers did not submit, and did not perform their pleasure, the daughter proceeding from his body, with many gifts, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought, and kissed my feet.”

Of Asshurbanapal as patron of art and literature we shall have occasion to speak more fully in a later chapter, in referring to the contents of his famous library. Not less noteworthy than this library was the gallery of art constituting the walls of the great king’s dining room. We turn now to the more detailed consideration of the life-histories of Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal, as interpreted by a modern authority.a

ESARHADDON’S REIGN (681-668 B.C.)

Sennacherib’s murderers did not stand alone, but had a considerable following. Asshur-akhe-iddin (Asshur is brother), Esarhaddon, as the Hebrews call him, who had been already destined to the throne by his father, had therefore to conquer the crown assigned him at the point of the sword. Although it was (Tebet) December—Sennacherib, as we have seen, had fallen on the 20th of this month—and consequently the time favourable for warlike operations had gone by, yet he perceived that this was a case for[420] prompt action. He lay with his army in the northwest, but without waiting a single day, without stopping to collect men, horses, chariots, or material, without even supplying himself with provisions, and in spite of snow and tempest, which might be feared at that season, he hurried straight to Nineveh; “like a bird of prey with outstretched wings.” At Khanigalbat, a neighbourhood the position of which is unknown to us, but which must be sought in or near North Aramæa [probably near Melid], the army of the rebels intercepted him. But these were soon defeated and scattered. A great part very probably went over to Esarhaddon. The two chiefs of the rebellion, his brothers, sought safety in flight and were received in Urartu. That one of them, as Abydenus would have us believe, fell in the battle, is not very probable. Still it is certain that they never again attempted to get possession of the government. On the 2nd of Adar (February) the rising was extinguished, and five weeks later, on the 8th of Nisan, that is, the beginning of the year 681 B.C. [Professor Rogers gives the month of Siran, 680, for this date], Esarhaddon mounted the throne of his father.

When his brothers’ rebellion was suppressed, Esarhaddon was indeed in safe possession of the Assyrian throne, but by no means in undisputed enjoyment of the sovereignty over the whole of his father’s empire. He was continually obliged to engage in wars and to quell risings.

The son of that arch-enemy of the Assyrians, Merodach-baladan, who is generally called Nabu-ziru-kinish-lishir (Nabu, guide the true scion!), had naturally taken advantage of the confusion resulting from the murder of Sennacherib and the war of the succession, to repudiate his allegiance, and may perhaps have already thought of reconquering Babylon. From Esarhaddon’s accession he had ceased to send the presents required from a vassal, and had also omitted to appoint an envoy to offer his homage to the new king, and thus to recognise his overlordship. He had evidently overestimated the difficulties with which the king had to contend, and had not anticipated that the latter would so soon repress the rebellion and be in a position to proceed against him with decisive energy. It is uncertain whether he himself risked the attack; it appears, however, that he had already penetrated as far as Ur. Esarhaddon, who was at Nineveh when he received the news of his defection, could certainly not now be spared there. But he ordered the governors of the province bordering on the maritime country to go out against the rebellious Chaldean at the head of an army which was despatched to them, and this proved sufficient. According to the Assyrian accounts Nabu-ziru-kinish-lishir did not await the attack, but fled to Elam. But this realm was no longer what it once had been. Ummanaldash II, who now reigned there, was not inclined to endanger the peace of his kingdom and involve himself in a war with Assyria for a stranger’s sake; the fugitive was seized and put to death. Na’id-Marduk, who accompanied him on his expedition to Elam, feared a like fate. He chose the wiser course; he hastened to Assyria, made his submission, and in reward was invested with the sovereignty of his brother’s kingdom, that is, of the whole seacoast. Henceforth he faithfully paid the annual tribute.

It was not so easy to put down another movement at another end of the empire. Very soon after Esarhaddon’s accession, perhaps even before, certain kings of the west country planned an attempt to free themselves from the Assyrian yoke. These were the kings of Sidon and of two other cities whose position is uncertain, but is certainly to be sought east of Sidon, namely Kundu and Sizu. Over the two last ruled Sanduarri, whose name proclaims[421] him as one of the Hittites or related to them, and over Sidon, Abd-milkot. They had to bind themselves by an oath to recover their independence with their united forces, and fought with great persistence. This is shown by the fact that they were not subdued till the fourth year of Esarhaddon, and also of the fearful vengeance of the Assyrians, so little in accordance with this king’s customary procedure. In the year 677 Sidon succumbed to the besieging force. The city was plundered, wasted, and depopulated. Town and citadel were “thrown into the sea” and the place where they had stood made unrecognisable. The population was brought to Assyria, with all its goods and cattle and all the treasures of that rich commercial city. But Esarhaddon did not, like his father, take pleasure in mere destruction. A new town rose in the place where the former had stood. He called it by his own name [Kar-Asshur-akhe-iddin], and allowed conquered mountain peoples and inhabitants of the coast of the Persian Gulf to settle there—the old means, devised by Tiglathpileser, for absorbing sentiments of nationality and independence into the unity of the great empire. Abd-milkot had meantime fled, probably to Cyprus; for Esarhaddon says that he “took him out of the sea like a fish.” He was overtaken, made prisoner, and put to death, and in the month Tasrit of the following year, 676, his severed head reached Assyria. It was some time before Sanduarri was conquered in his mountain country, but in the month Adar of the same year he suffered a like fate to that which had overtaken his ally. Then the barbarous triumph took place in Nineveh. All the captured subjects of the defeated kings, with the great and distinguished men at their head, were led through the broad streets of the capital, and two of the noblest carried the severed heads of the rulers round their necks. Revolt against the supreme king, which meant sin against Asshur, the god of the gods, when conducted with much obstinacy as was displayed by these two men, could not be severely enough punished.

If Esarhaddon intended by these severities to spread terror among the kings of the west country, he attained his object. Although according to the wont of the Assyrian annalists, the scribe places the narrative of the war in the king’s own mouth, he took no personal part in it, but remained quietly at Nineveh. Thither now came the ambassadors of some twelve kings, whom the Assyrians called simply Khatti-kings and kings of the seacoast, and with them those of ten kings who ruled in Cyprus, to offer him their homage and presents.

When the ten Cypriote rulers, whose names have for the most part a Greek sound, joined in the homage of the Assyrian, Phœnician, and Canaanite kings, it is obvious that Esarhaddon’s army, when it pursued the flying king to Cyprus, had there re-established the Assyrian rule which had not been exercised since the time of Sargon.

All these princes had to bring him costly material for the building of his great palace at Nineveh. There is an inclination to credit Esarhaddon with a special preference for Babylon, and to assume that he had made that town his headquarters, at least towards the end of his life. Our knowledge of the building he erected is, however, not favourable to this view. He certainly governed directly and not merely by vassal-kings that part of his realm of which Babylon was the capital, and there are good grounds for the assumption that he actually cherished the intention of establishing himself at Babylon; but it is none the less certain that for him, as for his fathers, until the nomination of Asshurbanapal as vassal-king of Assyria, the centre of the dominion was Assyria, and the Assyrian capital was his chief home.

[422]

Although Esarhaddon now imitated his father in his care for the decoration of the Assyrian capital, he did not limit himself to this so exclusively as his predecessors. On the contrary he boasts of having built the temples of the town of Asshur and Accad, and of having adorned them with silver and gold. That he did not neglect Accad or Babylonia is shown by the work, which surpassed all other undertakings, completed in his reign and for which he gave orders in his early years,—the reconstruction of the ruined capital itself.

In Elam it was with disapproving eyes that men regarded this renovation of Babylon by an Assyrian king and with it the re-establishment of the Assyrian rule in that territory. The king of Elam, Ummanaldash II, therefore decided to attack Esarhaddon in this part of the country. In 675, the sixth year of Esarhaddon’s reign, he invaded Babylon with an army, we know not on what pretext, and penetrated as far as Sippar. The misfortune was not, however, a lasting one. In that very year Ummanaldash died in his palace. Perhaps there is some connection between these Elamite disturbances and Esarhaddon’s campaign against the (to us) unknown country of Ruriza which he conquered in Tebet of the year 673. This may be said with certainty of the measures which he took against the Gambuli. That warlike Aramaic-Chaldean race, which had once constituted the vanguard of Merodach-baladan’s army, had then, at least, dwelt in a swampy tract of country where they lived “like fish in the midst of the rivers.” At this time their king was Belbasha (En-basha?), the son of Bananu, and in his impracticable country he had been able to preserve his independence. It was not he and his Gambulians that Esarhaddon now feared, but rather that he might easily be won over to ally himself with his neighbour Elam. Belbasha is pressed to choose and Esarhaddon makes ready to convince him by the unanswerable argument of his arms. But the Aramæan does not wait for the struggle. Knowing well that he has now no help from Elam to look to, he decides of his own accord to attest his submission to Assyria and sends the required presents. Thus Esarhaddon gains his object. The submission is accepted, the country spared, the capital, Shapi-Bel, extraordinarily fortified, the command laid on the prince to furnish it with bowmen and to defend it as “the door which unlocks Elam.” How well Esarhaddon had judged was to be shown later, when his heir had to punish the son and successor of Bel-basha for his intrigues with Elam.

These few facts, with the circumstance that, in the same year, 673, probably while the court was at Babylon, the queen died, are all that we know concerning the history of the southern realm under the reign of Esarhaddon.

More is known of the king’s warlike expeditions, or at least those of his army, for it is not likely that he himself took part in them all. Some of them are of little importance to history, or were directed against tribes whose locality we can no longer determine. We pass them over in silence here. Attention may, however, be called to an expedition against Teushpa, the king of the Kimmirri or Cimmerians, or more accurately against the Umman-manda, who dwelt at a great distance, and who were afterwards to be the cause of so much trouble to Asshur and Babylon. The Cimmerians are also referred to in other records as the enemies of Assyria in Esarhaddon’s day. According to these they joined in a great coalition which was formed against Asshur; at its head stood Kashtariti of Kar-Kasshi, a Median prince, who evidently dwelt on the borders of Elam, and Mamitiarsu, governor of the Medes, and to which the Manneans also belonged. At the[423] outset, at least, they were successful, took several towns now unknown to us (Khartam, Kishassu, and five others), and so great was the fear which they thus spread through Assyria, that in order to propitiate the gods, the priest (amelu khalti) was commanded to perform sacred rites and celebrate festivals in their honour from 3rd Airu to the 15th Abu—that is, during one hundred days. The issue of the struggle is not given in the Assyrian records, but it appears that the Babylonian chronicle told of the invasion of Assyria by the Kimmirri and of their defeat.

Perhaps this gave Esarhaddon an opportunity to revenge himself on the Medes and to conduct a war against their country with great persistence. He penetrated farther into it than any of his forefathers—namely, to the land of Patusharra (Patiskhoria?) which lay deep in Median territory, in the neighbourhood of the Bikni Mountains, where so much crystal was found. There ruled Shitir-parna and Eparna, two powerful princes whose names appear to be Iranian. They were subdued by the Assyrians and carried to Assyria with a rich booty, consisting chiefly of cattle, horses, and chariots. This visitation had the result that other princes from farther Media, who had not hitherto acknowledged the Assyrian supremacy, came of their own accord and tendered their submission.

At the other extremity of his empire, Esarhaddon maintained his sovereignty in the same fashion. The means by which Assyria had made herself, and remained during many centuries, the mistress of western Asia, was the pursuit of a traditional policy whose principles the impulsive Sennacherib had forsaken in the most deplorable fashion, but which distinguished Esarhaddon, as well as his grandfather Sargon. By a judicious blending of gracious forgiveness on the one hand and severe punishment on the other, he managed not only to confirm Assyrian sovereignty in the northern regions of Arabia, but also to extend it. Faithful to the rule by which those who had submitted of their own accord must be at once taken in favour, and admitted as allies, he listened to the petition of King Hazael (Khazailu) of Kedar when the latter came to Nineveh and requested that the images of the gods which had been carried thither, might be given back. Esarhaddon had them restored, caused his name and his famous deeds to be inscribed on them, and gave them back to Hazael. But on this king’s death he took care that the latter’s son Ya’lu, whom he raised to be king in his father’s stead, should be still more closely bound to Assyria and pay higher tribute. Under the same condition he restored to another tribe, together with the gods of which they had been previously despoiled, a certain princess Tabua who had been carried away from their midst and had grown up in the royal palace at Nineveh, and thus reinstated her in her position. It was soon evident that he had an object in these tokens of favour. He wished by this means to smooth himself a path to some Arabian tribes beyond, which were still independent and therefore dangerous to the frontiers, and who roamed about in the land of Bazu and in the mountains of Khazu. The march thither was very difficult, 180 kashbu kakkar (double hours) through an arid desert full of snakes and scorpions, so that it appeared almost advisable to secure a safe retreat. If the expedition against these remote tribes had failed, we should have learned nothing of it, at least from Assyrian sources; but it was successful. Six Arabian kings and two queens were defeated and probably put to death, and their treasures, gods, and subjects were then carried to Assyria; so many of the latter, at least, that the remainder were unable to defend themselves.

The glory of Esarhaddon’s reign is the conquest of Egypt, for which the[424] Arabian campaign, just described, no doubt served as a preparation. A decisive contest with Egypt was sooner or later unavoidable, especially since Tirhaqa had just brought the divided kingdom into a certain unity and was evidently striving again to raise it to the position of a great power.

In the year 672 Egypt took the first step. As usual, the prize was the overlordship of the West. Tirhaqa managed to persuade Baal, the king of Tyre, to break with Assyria, and thus threatened to draw the whole of the Mediterranean coast into rebellion. Prompt measures were taken, and in Nisan of 671 a powerful Assyrian army marched westward. The immediate goal is Tyre. It is surrounded and the water-supply cut off. Without waiting for the town to fall, Esarhaddon now proceeds south and halts at Aphek, not far from Samaria, thence within fifteen days, with a certain caution and perhaps not without encountering resistance, he leads his army to Rapikhu [Raphia] on the Egyptian stream which forms the boundary between that country and Canaan. Unfortunately the text breaks off abruptly where the narrative of the actual struggle with Egypt begins. But we learn from other sources that the object was attained and Egypt conquered. On the 3rd, 16th, and 18th Tammuz (June) three battles were fought, in which the Assyrians remained victorious. Memphis was taken on the 12th of the month, and although Tirhaqa succeeded in fleeing to his own land of Ethiopia, his son and his brother’s sons were taken prisoners.

Esarhaddon was now actually king over Egypt, and here again shows himself to be a prudent ruler. He was content with the title of dignity of “King of the Kings of Egypt”—that is, with the overlordship of the country. Had he incorporated it into Assyria, he would have weakened rather than strengthened his empire. His sole aim was to keep it disunited and consequently weak, and by the expulsion of the Ethiopian to put an end to the latter’s dangerous intrigues in the west. Therefore he did not put in his own generals, courtiers, or governors, but sought to bind the provincial princes to him by granting them a certain measure of independence. The sole danger for him lay in a united Egypt under the warlike king on whose assistance the ever restless kings of Phœnicia, Philistia, and Canaan might reckon; and he therefore contented himself with obtaining from the provincial princes an oath of fidelity to Assyria. Only the supremacy of Asshur must be distinctly apparent, so the Egyptian name of the northern capital, Saïs, was altered to the Assyrian one of Kar-bel-matati (fortress of the lord of the lands), and that of Neku’s son into Nabu-shezib-anni (Nabu preserved me!). After this Esarhaddon went back to Assyria, and on his homeward march he gave orders to carve his royal image and the account of his conquest of Egypt on the rocks by the Dog River (Nahr-el-Kelb) at Beirut, where, besides inscriptions and images of various Egyptian kings, some of his forefathers had caused theirs also to be cut.

The conquest of Egypt is the last great undertaking of Esarhaddon’s reign, which was to last only two or three years longer. In the year 670 he was occupied with Assyrian affairs, all details of which are, however, wanting. But by the following year it had become manifest that conditions in Egypt were not permanently settled. It was evident that a new expedition to the valley of the Nile was imperative. Esarhaddon assembled his forces and proposed to head his troops himself, to assert upholding the Assyrian domination in Egypt. Yet first—perhaps because he already had a presentiment of his approaching end, or because he did not trust the aspect of internal affairs—he appointed his eldest son, Asshurbanapal, as co-ruler in Assyria; if we are not to assume, what is also possible, that this was done before the[425] campaign of the year 671. The expedition came to nothing. On the 10th of the month Arakhsamnu (Marsheshwan, about October), of the year 668, in the twelfth year of his reign, the king died, either in Egypt or, as it is probable, before he reached it.

As the great king of a mighty empire Esarhaddon indeed stands very high; for although he was not more soft hearted, or, indeed, where insubordination had to be punished, less harsh than his predecessor, yet he did not act in obedience to ungoverned passion, but with deliberation, and this foresighted policy allowed him always to choose the golden mean between needless severity and dangerous indulgence. In a few years he strengthened the foundations of the Assyrian rule, and considerably extended it; he erected magnificent buildings, and made desolated Babylon rise again from her rubbish-heaps. By raising his son, Asshurbanapal, to the throne during his own lifetime, he made a struggle for the possession of the crown such as that with which his own reign had begun an impossibility, while by his wise and firm government he had laid the foundations for his son’s long, and, at least in the beginning, brilliant and glorious reign. Sennacherib had little in common with his great father; Esarhaddon was worthy to be the grandson of Sargon.

ASSHURBANAPAL’S EARLY YEARS (668-652 B.C.)

We have already seen that Esarhaddon made his son Asshurbanapal vassal-king of Assyria during his own lifetime. With festive display the young prince entered the royal palace which his grandfather Sennacherib had built, where his father Esarhaddon was born, and grown to manhood and had since held his court, and where he himself, as a friend of learning and science, now began to collect that extensive library which, after centuries had passed, was to make his deeds and the traditions of his nation known to the learning of the West. There in the presence of his father and his brothers, of the princes, captains, and great men of Assyria, he received the oath of fealty from the dependent kings and courtiers, calling on the name of the gods and binding themselves to obedience to his commands, and the maintenance of the ancient laws and institutions. It was an important step on the part of the old king. He did not indeed resign the government of Assyria. He remained king over this part of his kingdom as well as of the others, and the dignity to which he raised his son was only the petty or vassal-kingship, a filial government under his own still existing supremacy, whilst he was himself apart from this primarily king of Babylon, Sumer, and Accad, as well as king of the kings of the Egyptian countries. But for this very reason the appointment of the crown-prince as vassal-king of Assyria, in reality implied the transformation of that country, hitherto the centre of the empire, and whose capital had been the seat of the central government, into a kingdom occupying merely a secondary position, whilst Babylon became the seat of the chief rule and assumed the first place. It had become manifest that the true centre of the empire had shifted to Babylon, and that the latter now possessed more vital energy than Assyria.

Esarhaddon’s death had opened up to the Ethiopian the prospect of a reconquest of his lost territory. It was to be expected that Tirhaqa would take advantage of an opportunity so favourable to him, and soon, no doubt as early as the year 668, there came a messenger to Nineveh with the announcement that the king of Cush had marched into Egypt and not only overrun the whole south of the country, but had even made a triumphant[426] entry into Memphis, the town which Esarhaddon had included in Assyria. The governors whom the last Assyrian king had set up had not indeed gone over to the enemy, but neither had they ventured to resist him. On his advance they had deserted their chief towns and retired with their armed forces to the desert. Asshurbanapal recognised the gravity of the event, for it endangered the peace of the coast districts along the Mediterranean. He did not himself take the field, but he immediately sent a considerable force into the west under the leadership of the Tartan and other captains. The latter proceeded to Egypt by those forced marches for which the Assyrian army was distinguished, and hastened to the assistance of the governors who were hard pressed by Tirhaqa. At Karbanit, or Karbana, a town which lay west of the Canopic branch of the Nile, near its mouth, the armies joined battle. The defeat of the Egyptians was so complete that Tirhaqa thought it advisable to evacuate Memphis without giving himself time to break up his camp. This and all the Ethiopians’ armed river-boats fell into the hands of the Assyrians. Tirhaqa withdrew to Thebes and entrenched himself there.

Asshurbanapal, who had been informed of these successes of his army, decided to attack the enemy in Thebes. But as the Tartan’s army had also greatly suffered, he ordered the Rabshakeh, who apparently commanded the garrisons of the West, to collect a new army from the soldiers and auxiliaries under his command belonging to all governors and vassal-kings west of the Euphrates. Impressed by the defeat which Tirhaqa had sustained, the twenty-two kings of the seacoast, the plain, and the island of Cyprus hastened to obey this command, and not only to furnish soldiers, but also on demand of the supreme king to supply ships for the purpose of blockading the coast and prevent possible attempts at risings on the part of the maritime states on the banks of the Mediterranean, and perhaps also for sailing up the Nile. This army pushed on to join that of the Tartan and the troops of the loyal Egyptian vassals, and the united forces then marched against Thebes, which was reached a month and ten days later.

Meanwhile Tirhaqa had abandoned the town itself while it was still time, and had entrenched himself on the other bank of the river in the city of the tombs. Besides this, he had persuaded three of the principal vassal-kings to desert from the Assyrian and go over to his side. These were Sharludari, prince of Pelusium (Si’nu), Pakruru, ruler of Pisept in Egyptian Arabia, and no less a person than Neku himself, the king whom Esarhaddon had placed at the head of all. They even seem to have taken the initiative, because they preferred to have a ruler of kindred race as overlord, rather than obey a foreigner. So they offered to conclude an alliance with the Ethiopian, by which his supremacy was recognised, and they undertook the defence of Lower Egypt. Had their design succeeded, the Assyrian army would also have had a hostile power in its rear and have seen its retreat cut off. But fortunately for the Assyrians the conspiracy was discovered. Their messengers were seized, the letters intercepted, and their cunning plans thus cunningly frustrated.

But first Asshurbanapal had followed the example of his father and pardoned Neku. After he had exacted from him an oath of fealty to Asshur, and laid him under heavier burdens than before, he again put upon him the royal purple and furnished him with the symbols of his office: golden rings on hands and feet, a carved sword in a golden sheath, horses, and chariots; and so he sent him back to Egypt, that he might rule it as chief of the other vassals in Asshur’s name. He himself was again invested with[427] Kar-bel-matati,—that is, Saïs,—and his son, Nabu-shezib-anni, received the principality of Athribis in Lower Egypt, to which also a significant Assyrian name, Limir-shakku-Asshur (let the governor of Asshur beware) was given. The other kings also renewed their alliance with Assyria. But Asshurbanapal did not omit to strengthen the garrisons, and to give those whom he had pardoned Assyrian officers intended to keep a watchful eye upon them.

For a time Egypt enjoyed peace under Neku’s sway and Assyria’s lordship. But after the death of Tirhaqa, Tamut-Amen, too, began to think of a reconquest of Egypt. He set out with his army, and like the former Ethiopian king, is hailed with delight in Elephantine and Thebes as a deliverer; then after he has fortified the southern capital, he continues his march to Memphis, where he first encounters resistance. But the rebels, as the king calls them—these were of course the Assyrian garrison with the troops of Neku who ruled over Memphis and Saïs—were so thoroughly beaten in a desperate sally, that they evacuated Memphis and retired to the strongholds of the Delta. Some princes headed by that Pa-Kerer (Pakruru) of Pisept, who had always borne the Assyrian yoke with reluctance, came to offer their submission, which was graciously accepted. This was the last time that an Assyrian army undertook a campaign against Egypt.

While Asshurbanapal had restored his supremacy in Egypt for a certain time, for the present at least, it was unshaken in the northern provinces of the West. The most important event mentioned by the Assyrian record of these days (evidently about 664) is the accession of Lydia. Asshurbanapal relates that the Lydian king, prompted by a dream which revealed to him the magnanimity of Asshur, sent his ambassadors to Nineveh to request the alliance and protection of the great ruler. For the deity had said to him that by the renown of this name he should overcome his enemies. He did in fact succeed in doing so. The Cimmerians were beaten by him. It may be assumed, though it is not stated, that Gyges received other help from the Assyrians besides the recognition as their ally. However that may be, he conquered, and, on the successful termination of the war, sent two Cimmerian rebels with a great present to Nineveh. There they were no little flattered at this homage, but also no little embarrassed to make themselves understood by the newcomers, or to understand them; for even at a court where, as the Assyrian writer says, the languages of East and West were met together, there was no one acquainted with the speech of these barbarians.

Probably for the same reason as Gyges, Mukallu of Tabal, his eastern neighbour, and Yakinlu of Arvad, with perhaps also Sandasharme, of Cilicia, placed themselves under the protecting wing of Assyria. Knowing the tastes of the great ruler of nations, each of them sent him a daughter for his harem, with a rich present, and it appears that this was the custom. Some even, that they might exhibit the more zeal, sent him, besides their own daughters, those of their brothers and other relatives.

In the east, too, Asshurbanapal manifested the still unbroken superiority of his arms. There, shortly after or at the same time as the Egyptian campaigns, he had already chastised a mountain people whose raids had greatly distressed the inhabitants of Yamudbal [E-mutbal], on the borders of Elam, so that the chiefs of the town of Dur-ilu had made complaints concerning them. He had sent a force which subdued the tribe, brought the chieftain Tandai alive to Assyria and carried off a great number of captives. The king had them taken to Egypt and in their place peopled the wasted country with prisoners of war from other regions.

[428]

Of far greater importance was the campaign against Man. The cause is not stated, but may well have been that the king of Man, Akhsheri, declared himself independent, or had shown an evident disposition to attack Assyria. If this were so, he had been over-hasty in his proceedings. However little of the warrior there may have been in Asshurbanapal’s nature, the Assyrian army, in the early periods of his reign at least, was yet too fearless and its commanders too valiant for any man to be able to defy the powerful monarchy. Akhsheri attempted a night surprise of the troops sent against him, before they had even crossed his frontiers; but in this he was not successful. The Manneans were defeated in a bloody battle, and for a distance of six leagues round their dead covered the battle-field. Nothing retarded the victorious army from entering Man, where it laid waste eight great towns whose position is unknown to us, as well as a crowd of small places, and so reached the domain of the capital, Izirtu. It was surrounded, together with the towns of Urbija and Armijate, and after the inhabitants, driven to the last extremity, had surrendered, they were led away and their whole territory conquered and laid waste.

But the object was attained. The frightful misery of the war which had visited that unhappy country had embittered the population against the man to whom they ascribed its guilt, namely, their old king, Akhsheri. In any case, he had shown his incapacity to defend his country. With all his brothers and his father and family, he was put to death, and so great was the nation’s fury that they would not even concede him an honourable tomb, but threw the corpse on to the streets of his city. His son Ualli, himself already a middle-aged man, was raised to the throne, and he hastened to acknowledge Assyria’s supreme authority. He sent his young son to Nineveh, to kiss the monarch’s feet, and did not neglect to send his daughter also, to add to Asshurbanapal’s crowd of women. His submission was of course accepted, but his annual tribute was raised by some thirty horses. Other attempts at rebellion in the northeast were soon suppressed.

But whilst these disturbances in the northeast were suppressed without much difficulty, in the southeast signs soon appeared which gave warning of that great storm which in a few years was to be raised there and to threaten the empire with destruction. The throne of Elam was still occupied by Urtaki, who had always preserved a friendship with Esarhaddon, and had received from him repeated tokens of good will. Asshurbanapal had followed up this policy of his father and treated Urtaki as an ally, and when Elam was suffering from a severe famine after a prolonged drought he had not even refrained from extending a helping hand. He sent grain into the afflicted country, and not only permitted those of Urtaki’s subjects who fled to his country to settle there, but also allowed them to return to their native land, unhindered, when the rains had again appeared and a sufficient harvest secured. If in this he was prompted by motives of policy it was at least an intelligent and peaceable one. In a proclamation to the Elamite tribe of the Rash, and the tribes of the Sea Lands, he could appeal with truth to these tokens of neighbourliness. But they did not prevent Urtaki from taking arms against him and invading Babylonia.

It seems that Asshurbanapal could scarcely believe the news which he received. Instead of hurrying to the spot to avert the danger, as had been the custom of his warlike father, he sent a messenger to inquire into the state of affairs and to report to him upon it. The latter returned with the tidings that the Elamites had poured themselves over Accad like a swarm of locusts, and had even set up a fortified camp in sight of the city of Babylon.[429] He now hastily collected an army which drove the invaders from Accad, and even inflicted a defeat on them on the frontier. It is with a certain unction that the Assyrian scribe recounts the melancholy fate which soon after overtook all these enemies of his king. In the year which followed these events they all died: Bel-basha, as it seems, from a poisonous bite; Nabu-shum-eresh in a flood; Urtaki and his generals, in their despair, by their own hands in each other’s presence. Whether the narrator learned this on good authority or had only heard it from rumour, can scarcely be determined; but that in reality they all died soon after is certain; for in the subsequent war with Elam, sons or successors are found in their places.

The crown of Elam fell to Teumman, brother of the two previous kings, who was “like a devil,” says our Assyrian informant. That he was a tyrant who would shrink from no means of preserving his power, was also the conviction of the relatives of Ummanaldash and Urtaki, the last two kings of Elam. The one had left two sons, Kudurru and Paru, the other three, Ummanigash, Ummanappa, and Tammaritu. Well aware that their uncle was determined to remove them from his path, with all that belonged to them, in order to secure the succession to his own son, they abandoned their country with a great following, among which were included sixty members of the royal family and a bodyguard of bowmen, and sought shelter and protection with Asshurbanapal.

Naturally Teumman could not let this pass unnoticed. He therefore hastened to despatch two ambassadors to Nineveh, Umbadara, an Elamite, and a Chaldean, Nabu-dammik, and to demand through them the surrender of the fugitives. But Asshurbanapal, encouraged by favourable omens, dreams of his seers, and oracles of the gods; in other words, incited by his priesthood to whose guidance he always submitted in pious zeal, steadfastly refused to comply with Teumman’s demand and assembled an army. In the month of Ulul it was ready to march. He did not himself take the field, for in fact his army, led by one of his generals, had merely to support the Elamite force of Ummanigash, his brothers and cousins. Ummanigash himself was generalissimo, if only in name. The Assyrian general was empowered to set Ummanigash on the throne of Elam in the name of the Assyrian supreme king, after the conquest of the country.

Teumman was also in the field with an army. But when he learned that the troops of his rival and of the Assyrians had already marched into the towns of Dur-ilu, which lay not far from the frontier of his country, and several times therefore had been the scene of a struggle between the two powers, he turned back, abandoning the western provinces of his kingdom, and entrenched himself in his capital, Shushan [Susa], which lay on the eastern bank of the river Ulai [modern Karun]. Meanwhile the allied Assyrians and Elamites entered the royal city of Mataktu, which lay to the west of that river, and there Ummanigash is crowned king. Teumman, indeed, makes one more effort; owing to the damage which the text had undergone it is not exactly shown of what kind, but from the context it is plain that he sent out an army in vain to hinder the advance of his enemies. The latter, once more encouraged by a dream, cross the river after Teumman’s troops have suffered a defeat at Tul-Liz, and now attack Shushan itself. There the decisive battle takes place. It ends with the complete defeat of the Elamites: a great massacre begins, the river is filled with corpses, and innumerable women wander about the neighbourhood lamenting. Many distinguished and a large number of lesser prisoners fall into the hands of the Assyrians. All seek safety in flight. One of Teumman’s sons,[430] who had advised him against the war and had foretold the issue, rends his clothes in his despair. The eldest son, Tammaritu, follows his father in his flight to the forest, and when the king’s chariot breaks down there, they are overtaken and both slain. The king’s head is sent as a trophy to Assyria, where it was set up on the great gate of Nineveh, an eloquent witness to the nation of the might of Asshur and Ishtar. His son-in-law, Urtaki, himself begged an Assyrian to cut off his head and send it as good tidings to Asshurbanapal. Yet others of the great men of the kingdom come of their own accord and make their submission. The chief magistrates of the province of Khidali behead their own prince, Ishtarnandi, and one of them himself brings his master’s severed head into the Assyrian camp. Tammaritu, the third brother of Ummanigash, entrusts the government of this principality to the Assyrian generals, and Ummanigash himself now makes his entry into Shushan, and is there crowned as a vassal of Assyria. As pledge of his loyalty he delivers a grandson of Marduk-bal-iddin, better known by the Hebrew appellation Merodach-baladan, probably the author of the whole resistance to the Assyrian king, to the latter’s representatives.

But the war was not ended with the punishment of Elam. Dunanu, the son of Bel-basha, prince of Gambul, was now to be taught what it was to side with the enemy. The army, on its return from Elam, breaks into his territory, conquers the capital Shapi-Bel, carries away from it all who have not fallen by the sword, lays the whole place waste, and flings the ruins into the waters of the stream which flows around it; whereupon a motley crew of human beings are raked together and brought there to re-people the desolate country.

It was a grim revenge that was taken on all enemies, even when they were already dead, on their corpses. At the triumphal entry of the army into Nineveh, Dunanu was compelled to carry the head of his ally, Teumman, round his neck. When Teumman’s ambassadors, who had remained in Nineveh, saw this, one of them tore out his beard in his despair, and the other plunged a dagger into his own heart. Dunanu was placed on the rack in Arbela and died in tortures. All his brothers, including Samgunu, as well as Merodach-baladan’s grandson and his brothers, were also put to death; the chiefs of the Gambuli were even flayed, after they had had their tongues torn out as blasphemers of the high gods, after which all corpses were cut in pieces, and were then sent all over the empire, in token of the overlordship of Assyria. With a refinement of cruelty Asshurbanapal even caused the corpse of his old opponent, the Tigenna Nabu-shum-eresh, which he had had brought to Assyria from Gambul for the purpose, to be disfigured in the great gate of Nineveh by the latter’s own sons. Even before all this was brought to a conclusion, Sarduris III of Urartu, perhaps because he was already threatened by the Iranian enemies, who were soon to put an end to the Kingdom of Van, and was anxious to obtain the help of his powerful neighbour, despatched an ambassador to the latter. Asshurbanapal did not omit to make use of the occasion to bring Teumman’s ambassadors before the newcomers, in order to inspire the former with a consciousness of his greatness, and to give the latter a warning example in case their sovereign also should prove unfaithful.

Thus the greatest danger that had hitherto threatened the empire seemed permanently averted, and if ever a pitiless revenge was qualified to deprive the conquered nations of the desire to fight for their independence, this must certainly have been the case after such a sanguinary judgment. But it was soon to be manifested that it had availed nothing. Assyria had only[431] succeeded in making herself more detested than before, and had only stirred up princes and peoples alike to resist everything rather than any longer endure the yoke of the hangman of Asia.

THE BROTHERS’ WAR (652-648 B.C.)

About the year 652 a formidable war broke out against Assyria. It had, perhaps, long been secretly preparing before Asshurbanapal had any suspicion of the danger which threatened him. He believed that his conciliatory policy had secured the permanent attachment of the Babylonians. He had invested his brother, Shamash-shum-ukin, with the royal dignity, raised him to be lord of all Sumer and Accad, and had placed an army of foot-soldiers, horses, and chariots at his disposal. Those of the inhabitants of towns, plains, and farms who had left the country during the period of anarchy, or had been carried off, he had permitted to return. As for the Babylonians who had settled in Assyria, he did not merely place them on a level with his own immediate subjects, but treated them with especial distinction, continued the privileges which Esarhaddon had granted them, and raised them to important offices, and they even moved about his royal court unmolested, clad in magnificent garments with golden ornaments. They still continued to protest their submission to the Assyrian domination, yet all the time they were conspiring with Shamash-shum-ukin against the king.

The first intimation of this conspiracy came to the king from Kudur, the governor of Erech. This faithful servant had received from Sin-tabni-usur, the governor of Ur, information to the effect that envoys from the king of Babylon had been there and that some of the people had already risen. Sin-tabni-usur had no mind to give ear to the proposals from Babylon, and had consequently requested reinforcements. Kudur sent him five hundred men, who, at his request, were afterwards increased by troops belonging to the governor of Arpakha and Amida. But it seems that Sin-tabni-usur was unable to maintain himself until these supports came up, and even before their arrival found himself constrained to go over to the party of the rebels.

Asshurbanapal was soon to learn with horror that the movement, the soul of which was his disloyal brother, had spread with great swiftness, and that Kudur’s anxiety was not without foundation. Shamash-shum-ukin sent messengers in all directions, and they did not work in vain. All Accad and Chaldea, all the Aramæans of Babylonia, all the inhabitants of the Sea Lands joined with him. His chief ally in this district was: Nabu-bel-shume, grandson of Merodach-baladan, that irreconcilable enemy of Assyria, who was now king of Chaldea; Mannuki-Babili, prince of Bit-Dakkuri; Ea-shum-basha, prince of Bit-Amukkani, and Nadan of Puqudu.[432] Ummanigash, king of Elam, who owed his throne to Asshurbanapal, was also gained over by Shamash-shum-ukin. Asshurbanapal had fancied that he might venture to impose on the Elamite, who owed him so much, conditions which the latter could certainly only fulfil with great difficulty. He had demanded the restoration of the goddess Nana of Erech, which had been in the possession of Elam for centuries, and whose worship had become so popular that the kings still sent their gifts to the goddess of Erech. Ummanigash could not comply with this demand without exciting universal discontent in his kingdom, and, doubtless, in consequence of this, was all the more inclined to listen to the proposals of the Babylonian prince. They were supported by a rich gift, for which the temple treasures of Bel-Marduk in Babylon, of Nabu in Borsippa, and of Nergal in Kutha had been plundered. Ummanigash immediately sent auxiliaries to Chaldea. The Guti nomads on the Assyrio-Babylonian frontier, the kings of the West, with Baal of Tyre at their head, and the king of Melukhkha, by whom Psamthek is here doubtless meant; these, too, Shamash-shum-ukin found prepared to join him in a rising against Assyria. The secession of Gyges, king of Lydia, who had previously concluded an alliance with the Egyptian king, probably also belongs to this time, and it is certain that various Egyptian sheikhs also sided with Babylon. Only the peoples of the northeast and north of the empire appear to have taken no part in the movement. They were held in check by the energetic governors of Amida and Arpakha, the last of whom even prevented the north of Elam from rising against the supreme king.

There was need of energy and wisdom to exorcise the storm, which was approaching from so many sides at once. Asshurbanapal, with whom religion occupied so prominent a place, of course turned first to his gods. But he did not neglect active measures. Yet it is not clear or probable that he himself took up arms. When Tammaritu came to him in the year 650, he was at Nineveh. But in the preceding years he had sent out various armies to attack the allies at different points. As soon as the news from Babylon reached him, he issued a proclamation to the Babylonians, in which he denounced his brother’s treachery as ingratitude and exhorted those whom he had so favoured not to join Shamash-shum-ukin. It is true that these words found no echo amongst the nobility of Babylon, but they were not perhaps without influence on the temper of the nation. At any rate, the latter finally turned against their king. When Ummanigash’s troops invaded Chaldea and Kardunyash, in the year 657, they encountered an Assyrian force. At the head of the Elamites was the son of Teumman, that Elamite king whom Asshurbanapal had put to death, and who had been chosen by Ummanigash as his general, because he had the death of his father to revenge on the Assyrians. With him came the governors of Billate and Khilmu, Zazaz and Paru; Attumetu, the captain of the bowmen, Neshu the Elamite commander, and a Babylonian division joined them. The account of the battle is too much damaged for us to form any conclusion about it. But it is evident that the Assyrians obtained some success, to which the severed head of Attumetu, which was sent to Asshurbanapal at Nineveh, bore witness.

It was not so easy to coerce the chief author of the war. Shamash-shum-ukin’s first measure was to close all the gates of Babylon, Borsippa, and Sippar, to place garrisons in all places of any importance, and make himself master of all the towns in Babylonia. As a sign that he renounced his allegiance, he caused all the sacrifices to the highest gods, which Asshurbanapal had instituted, to be suspended, and appropriated all the gifts assigned[433] to them, a measure which excited the indignation of the supreme king more than anything else.

This happened in the year 650, for it must have been in the April of that year that Bel-ibni was appointed governor of the lands on the coast. Chaldea and the surrounding territories were now also subdued. These had revolted in the previous year after Shamash-shum-ukin had raised the standard of rebellion in the year 652. On the 4th Nisan 651, Merodach-baladan’s grandson, Nabu-bel-shume, had collected an army of Accadians, Chaldeans, and Kardunyashu (the men of the coast) in which he had included the Assyrians whom Asshurbanapal had sent him as auxiliaries or garrison. Between the 22nd Tammuz and 22nd Abu of the same year, Sin-tabni-usur, the governor, had joined them, and between 7th Abu and the 7th Ulul the Elamite auxiliaries had also marched up. But in the end the Assyrian army had defeated them all and compelled the Elamites to retreat. Nabu-bel-shume had followed them with his troops to Elam. The Assyrians, on whom he could not depend, he had previously sent under a reliable commander in the same direction, very probably under pretence of letting them march against Elam, and thus had delivered into the hands of Indabigash. Perhaps this defeat was the cause of Tammaritu’s fall. It must have at least followed soon after. The south of Babylonia was certainly again brought under the Assyrian dominion towards the end of year 651.

Asshurbanapal could now turn his thoughts to attacking the arch-rebel in his own territory. It seems that the latter had again entered into relations with Elam, and either now went there in person or sent messengers. But on the 17th Arakhsamnu (Marsheshwan) 651, Asshurbanapal’s warriors advanced against his brother. In the year 650 they stormed in fearful fashion through northern Babylonia, instituted a formidable massacre of Shamash-shum-ukin’s subjects in town and country, made themselves masters of the canals, and finally surrounded Sippar, Babylon, and Borsippa, which the Babylonian king had fortified. The siege must have lasted a year or two, for it was not till 648 that the capital was taken.

And it would not have fallen then—so obstinately was it defended—had not the misery within the walls reached the acme. The famine was so dreadful that the besieged fed on the flesh of their own children, and famine was followed by plague. The gods themselves fought for the Assyrians, as the historian remarks. Then despair fell upon the people. In their fury they laid hold on Shamash-shum-ukin, and threw him, doubtless together with some of his satellites, into the fire. The town was then, of course, handed over to the enemy, and thus escaped the fate which Sennacherib had already inflicted on it. A strict trial was held. Those who had been concerned in the rebellion, such of them as had escaped the sword, hunger, and plague, who had saved themselves betimes during the rising and so could not be burnt with their master, were dragged from the hiding-place where they had concealed themselves into the light of day, and slain without grace or mercy, so that not one of them escaped. Those who had incited to rebellion and defamed Asshur had their tongues torn out of their mouths before they were sent to death. But the heaviest punishment overtook those who had already been punished as rebels by the king’s grandfather, Sennacherib, and whose severed limbs were now thrown to the dogs and all kinds of beasts of prey. The corpses of those who had been destroyed by disease, hunger, and wretchedness, and which filled the streets of Babylon, Sippar, Kutha, and the surrounding country, were dragged away and piled up in heaps, and the insulted gods and angry goddesses were appeased by the care which was[434] now bestowed upon their sanctuaries and altars. All fugitives were pardoned and granted life; they were permitted to settle in Babylon. Nor was the town plundered in any way. Asshurbanapal contented himself with the spoil from the palace of his rebellious brother, with his harem, household chariots, munitions of war, and the tokens of his royal dignity, and all this he had carried to Assyria with the captured warriors.

In the south of the country the ferment seems to have lasted longer. The Accadians, Chaldeans, Aramæans, and inhabitants of the coast, who had formerly served Shamash-shum-ukin and then submitted to the Assyrian governor, Bel-ibni, had now of their own accord once more risen against Asshurbanapal; but the Assyrian army, now the army of Babylon, marched into their territory, and soon brought the whole country back to the Assyrian dominion. Governors and princes appointed by the king reintroduced the Assyrian laws, and saw that the yearly tribute was henceforth paid regularly.

THE LAST WARS OF ASSHURBANAPAL (648-626 B.C.)

As before related, Merodach-baladan’s grandson, Nabu-bel-shume, had delivered those troops which Asshurbanapal had sent him for the defence of his country against the Elamites and insurgent Babylonians into Indabigash’s hand. Even before Babylon was taken, the Assyrian king had sent an envoy to the latter to demand the release of these men. Indabigash had answered with proposals for peace. He does not seem to have dared to risk a struggle with Assyria, nor yet to have been prepared to comply with Asshurbanapal’s request; the party of the Chaldeans and their friends was probably too powerful in Elam for this. After Babylon had fallen, the Assyrian sent a fresh messenger, supported by a numerous army, with a vigorous ultimatum to Elam. “If thou restorest not these men,” so ran the message, “then will I come and destroy thy cities, carry away the people of Shushan, Madaktu, and Khidalu, thrust thee from thy royal throne, and put another in thy place. As formerly I destroyed Teumman, so will I destroy thee.” But the envoy had not yet got so far as Deri, when the war party killed Indabigash from a natural fear lest he should yield, and had made Ummanaldash, the son of Attumetu, king.

Of course the latter refused Asshurbanapal’s request, and the war broke out afresh. Asshurbanapal now intended to establish Tammaritu for the second time in the government of Elam, a policy which again was destined not to be realised. A powerful army, led by this claimant, marched into the enemy’s country, and several border-towns immediately submitted through fear, and came to offer their men and cattle. The first resistance was encountered at Bit-Imbi, once a royal city of Elam, “which shut in the front of Elam like a great bulwark,” and had been conquered by Sennacherib and razed to the ground. But a later Elamite king had built a new[435] Bit-Imbi opposite the old town and surrounded it with a strong wall and outworks. This town defended itself obstinately, but it was conquered, and those who would not submit were beheaded and their lips sent to Assyria as trophies of victory. The captain of the bowmen, Imbappi, who was a son-in-law of the Elamite king and had commanded in the city, fell alive into the enemy’s hands, together with the harem, the sons of the former king Teumman, and the rest of the population, and was led away to Assyria.

This feat of arms appears to have been of great importance, for no sooner did it reach Ummanaldash’s ears than he fled from Madaktu into the mountains. The same course was followed by another prince (Umbahabua?) who had reigned in Elam for a time, before Ummanaldash, but, in face of a rebellion, had retreated to Bubilu. He too left his dwelling, and hid himself in the low-lying districts on the seacoast. Elam was now open to the Assyrian army, which made use of the opportunity to march into Shushan and there again consecrate Tammaritu king. But the latter perceived that it was only as a shadow king that he had been set up. When the Assyrian troops who had accompanied him withdrew to their own country with the greater part of the population as prisoners and an enormous spoil, he was completely undeceived and sought to prevent this impoverishment of the land by force. But he was unsuccessful. In the eyes of the Assyrians this was base ingratitude; he was deposed and again carried off, and before the return march was finally entered upon, a regular drive was made over the whole of Elam, during which the chief towns were sacked. But no Assyrian garrison remained behind in the country, and there is no word of its permanent annexation. Immediately after the withdrawal of the Assyrian army, Ummanaldash II came out from his hiding-place and once more obtained possession of the government.

But Asshurbanapal was not satisfied with this non possum, and this time he sent Tammaritu himself as ambassador with another demand. The oracle he had asked from the goddess of Erech had enjoined on him to fetch back the image of the goddess Nana, which had been carried off to Elam centuries before. It will be remembered that this oracle had already served as an excuse to draw Ummanigash into a war. It was now again made use of. But Ummanaldash, no more than his predecessor, could comply with the demand without setting throne and life at stake. No other choice remained for him than to try the fortune of war.

The war proceeded as it had the first time, but was conducted with more energy and certainly lasted longer. Bit-Imbi was again taken, then the Rashi country and the city of Khamanu with its territory, a conquest which the Assyrians thought important enough to be perpetuated in a relief. Although all this was only frontier territory, Ummanaldash thought it advisable to leave Madaktu, the western capital of his country, and to retreat to Dur-Undasi, a town on the farther side of the Ulai, but west of the river Ididi, which formed a strong natural defence. Thus he abandoned a great part of his country, but even there he did not feel himself safe and crossed the Ididi that he might range his troops behind it in order of battle. The Assyrians pursued their triumphal march, took one town after the other, and at last came to Dur-Undasi. But here the army refused to go farther, and two days went by before they could make up their minds to cross the apparently dangerous river. However, in the nick of time, Ishtar of Arbela, the warlike goddess, whose priesthood doubtless accompanied the army with a portable sanctuary or ark, sent one of her seers a dream in which she promised her help, and this restored the army’s courage. The crossing was a success, the army of[436] Ummanaldash was beaten, and twelve Elamite provinces east of the Ididi with fourteen royal cities and a number of smaller places were abandoned to destruction.

Still there was no intention of taking possession of the country, and when Ummanaldash with the remnant of his army had gone farther into the mountains, and consequently there was no longer a dangerous enemy on the east side of the Ididi to hinder the operations on the west side, the Assyrians marched back into Shushan. There was the goddess for whose sake the whole expedition had been undertaken. On former occasions, when Shushan had been taken, the object of the war was to set the Elamite pretender on the throne, then the restoration could hardly be demanded. But now Asshur was in arms against Elam itself, and consideration need no longer be shown. The goddess was brought back to Erech to her sanctuary, E-khili-anha, “the house of power in the heavens,” and the king caused new and permanent sanctuaries to be erected for her.

To all appearances and contrary to his practice, he had himself come to Shushan. At least, it is related that he clasped the hands of the goddess, that is, performed a religious ceremony in her sanctuary and that he also had the gratification of entering the palace of Shushan and seating himself on the throne of the hereditary enemy of Assyria. Elam was one of the oldest and most famous monarchies of Asia, and Shushan was the sacred city, the seat of the gods and the place of their oracles. In the treasure chamber of the royal citadel were heaped up all those valuables which the kings of Elam had collected “down to the kings of those days,” and which had never yet been touched by a victorious enemy. No little of the treasure had been taken away by former Elamite kings from Sumer, Accad, and Kardunyash, and there was also a collection of valuables and jewels with royal insignia, which former kings of Accad, down to Shamash-shumukin, had presented to Elam in exchange for her help. All this, with all the glories of the royal palace, where a rich and splendour-loving court had resided, Asshurbanapal took with him to his own states. The very tombs of the kings were not spared by the conqueror: they were destroyed and exposed to the light of day; even the corpses were carried off, so that the shades had to wander about homeless. In order to mortify the enemy as much as possible, the Assyrian soldiers were allowed to desecrate those sacred forests, whose precincts no unhallowed foot might ever tread, and then to burn them.

Whilst the Elamite war was still raging in the west, the Arabs had again arisen. Abiyate, whom Asshurbanapal had appointed in the place of Yauta-ben-Hazael as Assyrian vassal-king of Aribi, entered into negotiations with Natnu, prince of Nabathea, to whom Yauta had formerly fled, but who had at that time thought it safer to seek the friendship of Assyria. He now allowed himself to be persuaded to trouble the borders of the western provinces of Assyria, in conjunction with Abiyate. Lest the forces in this district should not be strong enough to face the joint attacks of the Arabs, a powerful army was despatched from Assyria to quell the rising. Arrived on the 25th Sivan at Khadata, which probably lay at the eastern extremity of this desert, the army pursued its way unchallenged to Laribda, a well-watered oasis, where the camp was fixed, and then marched on to Khurarina, not far from Yarki and Azalli, still in the same desert, where the first encounter took place. There the Isamme, the Bedouins, who worship the god Atarsamain and the Nabatheans, sought to stop the further progress of the Assyrian army, but were defeated. The victors, having provided themselves with water from Azalli, marched on to Kurasiti. There again stood Bedouins[437] who worship Atarsamain, with Yauta-ben-Bir-Dadda and the men of Kedar, but they too gave way, and not only a rich booty, but Yauta’s gods and women, with his mother, fell into the Assyrians’ hands and were carried with them to Damascus. On the night of the 3rd Abu, after a rest of about forty days, the Assyrian army marched to the town of Khulkhuliti, south of Damascus, and in the mountain region of Khulkurina a battle was fought with the two sons of Te’ri, namely, the leaders of the rebellion, Abiyate and Aamu. Aamu was taken alive, chained hand and foot, and sent to Nineveh, where Asshurbanapal had him flayed. The remainder of the troops sought refuge in the hiding-places in the mountains; but when the Assyrians set guard in all the surrounding places and cut off their supplies of water, they found themselves under the necessity first of killing their camels and then of surrendering themselves. They, too, were taken to Assyria, and thus the country was as though “inundated with Arabs and camels.” Yauta-ben-Bir-Dadda still kept the field with his troops; but when disease and famine had made terrible havoc among them, they came to the conclusion that they were no match for the might of the Assyrian gods, rose against their king, and drove him from them. He was seized by the enemy and sent to Assyria. There his son was killed before his eyes by Asshurbanapal’s own hand, and he and his cousin bound with a dog-chain to Nerib-mashuakti-atuati, the eastern gate of Nineveh. The king counted it as a favour that he escaped with his life.

Even Ummanaldash was also destined to fall into the Assyrians’ hands. His own subjects rose against him, perhaps at the instigation of a certain Ummanigash, a son of Ametirra, and he sought refuge in the mountains. The Assyrians made use of these disturbances to march into Elam, fan the fire of rebellion, and lead Ummanaldash in triumph to their own country. The ancient monarchy, which had so often threatened Assyria, was now entirely broken. For a time Elam still prolonged a melancholy existence. She was not annexed to the Assyrian Empire. But when, within a few years, the latter’s power had disappeared, Elam fell an easy prey to the Persians, when Prince Sispis, or Teispes, of the race of the Achæmenidæ, placed himself on the throne of Shushan.

Little dreaming that the hour of Asshur’s downfall was so soon to strike, Asshurbanapal revelled in the joy of victory. In memory of all these triumphs, and in order to show his gratitude for the help of the gods, he built a new sanctuary for the great goddess of Nineveh, the spouse of Asshur, and when it was ready and he presented himself in it in order to consecrate it with ceremonial sacrifices, he had his royal chariot dragged to the gate of the temple by four captive kings,—Tammaritu, Pa’e, Ummanaldash, and Yauta. This barbarous triumph was his last, and the last also of the renowned Assyrian army.b

FOOTNOTES

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[438]

CHAPTER V. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA

We have followed the fortunes of Assyria through several dynasties of clearest historical record. But, curiously enough, as we now proceed the landmarks disappear, and we enter a realm of myth, as if we were going backward instead of forward in time. Even while Asshurbanapal lives, the record becomes vague, and after him there is almost nothing securely known of its details. Even the names of his successors are somewhat in doubt. The only sure thing is the broad historical fact that the empire declined in power until it was completely overthrown by the Scythians and Babylonians about twenty years after the death of Asshurbanapal—the precise date of this closing scene being, like all other details of the epoch, more or less in doubt.

Our surprise at this cataclysmic overthrow is the greater in that we have just seen the Assyrian Empire at such a height of apparent power under Asshurbanapal. The palaces, libraries, and art treasures of that king as now known to us convey an irresistible impression of a powerful monarch. Yet it is held that the decline in Assyrian affairs had begun even during the life of Asshurbanapal.a

Professor Rogers has well summed up an impression as to the cause of this decline. After noting the glories of the reign in matters of literature, sciences, and art, and giving Asshurbanapal a full meed of praise as regards his attainment in this direction, Professor Rogers continues:

In war only had he failed. But by the sword the kingdom of Assyria had been founded, by the sword it had added kingdom unto kingdom until it had become a world-empire. By the sword it had cleared the way for the advance of its trader, and opened up to civilisation great territories, some of which, like Urartu, had even adopted its method of writing. It had held all the vast empire together by the sword, and not by beneficent and unselfish rule. Even unto this very reign barbaric treatment of men who yearned for liberty had been the rule and not the exception. That which had been founded by the sword and maintained by the sword would not survive if the sword lost its keenness or the arm which wielded it lost its strength or readiness. This had happened in the days of Asshurbanapal. He had conquered but little new territory, made scarcely any advance, as most of the kings who preceded him had done. He had not only not made distinct advances, he had actually beaten a retreat, and the empire was smaller. Worse even than this, he had weakened the borders which remained, and had not erected fortresses, as had Sargon and Esarhaddon and even Sennacherib, for the defence of the frontier against aggression. He had gained no new allies, and had shown no consideration or friendship for any people who might have been won to join hands with Assyria when the hour of struggle between[439] the Semites and the Indo-Europeans should come. On the contrary, his brutality, singularly unsuited to his period and his position of growing weakness, his bloodthirstiness, his destructive raids into the territories of his neighbours, had increased the hatred of Assyria into a passion. All these things threatened the end of Assyrian prestige, if not the entire collapse of the empire.

The culture which Asshurbanapal had nurtured and disseminated was but a cloak to cover the nakedness of Assyrian savagery. It never became a part of the life of the people. It contributed not to national patriotism, but only to national enervation. Luxury had usurped the place of simplicity, and weakness had conquered strength. The most brilliant colour of all Assyrian history was only overlaid on the palace and temple walls. The shadows were growing long and deep, and the night of Assyria was approaching.b

Whatever our precise estimate of this criticism of Asshurbanapal, it is clear that the successors of that monarch were unable to sustain the traditions of their fathers. Assyriologists have recently restored to us the names of Bel-zakir-ishkun or Asshur-etil-ili, Sin-shar-ishkun, as the immediate successors of Asshurbanapal, the last named being the one who is believed to have been the occupant of the throne when the conquering hosts of Cyaxares finally razed Nineveh to the ground.

It may fairly be presumed that there exist somewhere among the yet unrecovered treasures of Mesopotamia, inscriptions giving more or less full accounts of the destruction of Nineveh. But be that as it may, no such inscription has yet come to light; at least none such has been deciphered. There is an abundance of material in the various museums of Europe and America that has not yet been fully investigated. The reading of inscriptions in the arrow-head script is an extremely difficult task; indeed, it has been claimed, perhaps half jestingly, by one of the greatest of living orientalists, that only four scholars in the world are competent to read securely Assyrian or Babylonian texts from the original clay tablet. Doubtless this is an exaggeration, but it is one full of suggestion as to the difficulties encountered by the would-be investigator of Mesopotamian history; and at the same time offering an explanation of the fact that so much material is awaiting its turn, and must long remain unpublished, notwithstanding the importance and interest of the historical secrets thus entombed. Possibly, as has been suggested, the story of the destruction of Nineveh may be among these secrets, but as to the validity of this surmise time must decide.

Meanwhile the twentieth-century historian is but little better off than his predecessor of the times before the advent of modern Assyriology in regard to this particular problem. Whoever would picture to himself the destruction of Nineveh has no resource but to turn back to such classical accounts as that of Diodorus, giving whatever degree of credence he may choose to the details of the story. One qualification, however, may be added. We at least are tolerably sure, as our predecessors could not be, that the last ruler of Nineveh did not bear the name which classical tradition ascribed to him. Just as there was no Ninus, founder of Nineveh, so there was no Sardanapalus last ruler of that famous city. In regard to this detail, tradition was at fault here as so often elsewhere. None the less will the name of Sardanapalus long continue to symbolise the idea of the last ruler of Nineveh, whose effeminate reign and tragic end form so interesting a theme for the classical writer.a

[440]

LAST YEARS AND FALL OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE (626-609 B.C.)

In all probability, Asshurbanapal lived until 626, and during the whole of his reign he remained firmly established in possession of the Assyrian throne and also of the kingdom of Babylon. Elam had been rendered powerless, Babylon had been conquered, and the desert dwellers of the west were too much weakened and impoverished by the severe lesson taught them, as well as by hunger and disease, to be dangerous. Media was only in her youth, and Assyria was still strong enough to resist the first onrush of this new, conquering state. Besides her northeastern and northern neighbours, the states of Asia Minor and the inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast had enough to do to defend themselves against the barbarians who were pressing upon them from the north and east. Egypt was indeed independent, but could not seriously think of conquests in Asia. The condition of the Assyrian Empire resembled the calm before the storm.

In his latter years the king doubtless devoted himself by preference to the works of peace. He had already erected many buildings, even during the period of his great wars. He had continued and completed the work on the temples of Assyria and Babylonia, which Esarhaddon had begun. Unfortunately the inscription which enumerates the principal structures belonging to the first half of his reign only occasionally mentions the places in which the temples he erected stood. In the later years of the king’s reign the walls of Nineveh demanded his attention. They were loosened by annual rains and the violent showers of Adad, and had sunk. Asshurbanapal restored them and made them stronger than before. When he had seen his great campaigns crowned with victory, he at last undertook an important work in Nineveh, the town of Bel and Ishtar. Bit-Riduti, the great palace, which Sennacherib had built and established as a royal dwelling, had fallen to ruins. This king did nothing without the gods. It was now again a dream which made known to him their will that he should repair the damage to the palace. This was done. The forced labour of Assyrian subjects brought the stone in carts from the spoil of Elam; and the captive Arabian kings, decked out with appropriate marks of distinction, shared in the labour as workmen. When the palace was completed to the pinnacles and enlarged, it was surrounded with noble grounds; and when the victims were slaughtered at the consecration, the king made his entry carried in a gorgeous palanquin and with festive rejoicings.

Of all the objects assembled in this palace the king set the highest value on the library which he had founded and which has now for the most part[441] been unearthed and brought to Europe. Asshurbanapal was, without any doubt, an admirer and patron of learning and a prince who loved art. He did not allow the libraries of Babylonia to be plundered, but he had the literary treasures which were buried there, including whole works on philosophical, mythological, and poetic subjects, copied in Assyrian characters and added to the historical records of his own predecessors. He even seems to have studied them diligently himself, and to have encouraged their perusal. The fruit of this study is shown in his own memorials. In fact these have some literary value, which cannot be said of the dry chronicles of former kings. He was not, however, the first to found a library. Not only had the ancient Babylonian kings—it is said even Sargon I of Agade—preceded him in this respect, but the Assyrian kings had also set him an example. This was certainly true of Sennacherib, in whose palace at Nineveh, according to the calculation made by George Smith, probably twenty thousand fragments are now awaiting the investigator who can find the time and means to dig them out and make them accessible to western learning. But it cannot be denied that Asshurbanapal earned the gratitude of scholars by rendering so many treasures of the Babylonian libraries accessible to his compatriots, and also by founding libraries in other places; as, for example, in Babylon, and that he devoted more attention to these things than any of his predecessors.

The popular tradition of the downfall of the Assyrian Empire, which took shape in later years and came from the Persians to the Greeks, represents Sardanapalus (by whom none other than Asshurbanapal can be meant) as the type of a luxurious, effeminate, oriental despot, who forgets his kingly duties in the enjoyments of his harem, abandons his empire to the enemies rising against him on all sides, and finally, shut up in his capital, delivers himself in despair to the flames with his wives and all his treasures. We now know how little this picture agrees with the truth, but from what is historically credible we can gather how it arose. Asshurbanapal did indeed take pleasure in filling his women’s palace with the daughters of all the princes subdued by him, and with those of their nearest relatives; and these princes knew well what was pleasing to the supreme king. It is true that this proceeded as much from love of display as from an inclination to voluptuousness; it is true that policy also had a share in it, because by this means his supremacy was confirmed and a pledge given for further submissiveness; it is true that the custom was a usual one with oriental monarchs; but a king who pursued it to such an extent must have been easily transformed into a voluptuary in the minds of his people.

There was also some reason for regarding him as weak and effeminate. The great Assyrian monarchs, at least during the years of their youth and vigorous manhood, had themselves frequently led their armies to victory. It was seldom, if ever, that Asshurbanapal joined in the fight. His official historians do, indeed, ascribe to him the honour of all the victories during his reign, but they have not succeeded in hiding the fact that his generals fought the battles. Yet he was by no means a weakling. That he was an eager hunter is testified by a number of hunting inscriptions, some of them accompanied by reliefs. In any case, a prince who could find pleasure in so manly a pastime was no effeminate voluptuary, little warlike though he may have shown himself to be.

The king’s tragic end in the flames of his own palace, of which the legend speaks, may have been shifted on to him from his brother, Shamash-shum-ukin, or, still more probably, from the last Ninevite king. That he, the last[442] great king of Assyria, should have been supposed to continue reigning until the end of the empire, while the insignificant kings who really followed him were forgotten, is natural enough. In short, Asshurbanapal was not a hero who strove to reap the laurels of the battle-field through difficulty and privations on distant campaigns. He preferred to linger in his luxurious palace, and to alternate the delights of the harem and the pursuit of learning with the royal lion-hunting. He was very pious, and did nothing without consulting the oracles of his gods or the dreams of his seers. If he thought the dignity of his empire, and with it the honour of his gods, insulted by an obstinate rebellion, he would avenge them as his predecessors had done by punishments of ingenious cruelty, inflicted both on individuals and on whole countries. The fearful suffering which the war on Asshur’s enemies wrought in its train, the pestilence which filled the streets with corpses, the famine which drove parents to destroy their own children, filled him with transports of joy. His ruling idea was the unity and vastness of his empire. If he left the sword in its sheath, the love of pleasure did not make him neglect his duties as a ruler. He took care that his armies should always be ready to take the field, which would not have been possible without good organisation; and they triumphed over almost all his enemies, maintained his sway against a powerful coalition, crushed the formidable Elam so severely that she never recovered from the blows she had received, and, if not during his reign, at least shortly after it, repelled the advancing Medes. He regularly transmitted his orders to all the governors in his empire, and was by them kept carefully informed of anything of importance which happened in their provinces. No one of his victorious military leaders ever ventured to turn his arms against him. All, including the governors, recognised him and honoured him as their king. Such he was in the fullest sense of the word. In his palace at Nineveh, during two-and-forty years, he held the reigns of government with a strong hand. And this is all the more creditable to the influence of his personality, since the empire was internally weakened by his own political mistakes, in particular by the removal of the centre of government from Babylon, which Esarhaddon had made its seat, to Nineveh, and by other causes, so that it went to pieces a few years after his death.

After him at least two kings ruled over Assyria, who were probably brothers, for one of them, Bel-zakir-ishkun, was the son of a king of Assyria, and grandson of a king of Sumer and Accad, and though their names are missing from the inscriptions, they can have been none other than Asshurbanapal and Esarhaddon; and the other, Asshur-etil-ili [who is sometimes known by a lengthened form of his name, Asshur-etil-ili-ukinni] is expressly called the son and grandson of these rulers. Probably Bel-zakir-ishkun reigned first, and then the other.[27] No historical records have been preserved, dealing either with the fortunes and achievements of these kings or with the fall of Assyria. Certain texts have led some to conclude that a third king, a namesake of Esarhaddon, may have swayed the sceptre at this period, but this has been shown to be extremely questionable.

Immediately after Asshurbanapal’s death, or perhaps even in the last year of his reign, Babylon broke away from the Assyrian rule, and this time the separation was permanent. The empire was much weakened by it. The north and northwest, Urartu and the states of Asia Minor, gradually fell[443] into the power of the ever-advancing Medes. The Assyrian lordship over the countries on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea now existed in name only, so that King Josiah of Judah was able to effect his reform unhindered, and to act as master in the territory of the ancient kingdom of Israel, which for years had been an Assyrian province. And in the year 608 Neku II, king of Egypt, was able to think of extending his empire to the Euphrates, as in days long past, and to take arms against Assyria with the idea of wresting from her all her western provinces. The foundation of the new Babylonian Empire and the invasion of the Egyptians, who could no longer be repelled by the Assyrians, but were only to give way before the Babylonian arms, are described elsewhere. Here we only mention them as among the causes which brought about the fall of the Assyrian Empire. That empire no longer had any real existence, at least as a ruling power. Thrust back to its old frontiers, the ancient Assyrian state slowly languished and only awaited the death-blow.

That blow was to come from the Medes in alliance with the Babylonians, and was partly hastened, partly stayed, by the great migratory streams of the Cimmerians and Scythians.c

Though Professor Tiele’s admirable history is recent, much new information concerning the last days of the Assyrian rule at Nineveh has come to light, and historians are now able to place the conquest of the city by the Manda in the reign of Sin-shar-ishkun. Without overlooking a certain Sin-shum-lishir, who is mentioned in several places as an Assyrian king, and must have ruled about this time, but whose personality has not yet been unwrapped from the historic gloom, it is safe to say that this Sin-shar-ishkun was Asshur-etil-ili’s successor. From contract tablets found at Sippar and Erech we know that he occupied the Assyrian throne in 612 B.C., and that his dominion included a part of Babylonia as well. Later records would show him to be of much stronger character than the man he succeeded. In 610 or 609 he attempted to wrest more of the Babylonian provinces from Nabopolassar, and the harassed king took the fatal step of appealing to that people from the north, who for the most part had formed part of the great Indo-European migration into western Asia. Already these Scythian hordes, the Manda, had their eye on the rich Mesopotamian Valley, and therefore Nabopolassar’s appeal did not fall upon unwilling ears. Sin-shar-ishkun was indeed driven back, but when that happened the Manda were in the coveted land. The reader will observe that we have just spoken of the Manda and not the Medes as the assailants of Nineveh. This is because of the recent clearing up of a historical error that was our heritage from the Greek historians. They simply confused the Manda, the nomadic tribes that lived northeast of Assyria towards the Caspian Sea and were the classical Scythians, with the Mada, or true Medes. As Professor Sayce says: “It was not until the discovery of the monuments of Nabonidus and Cyrus that the truth at last came to light and it was found that the history we had so long believed was founded upon a philological mistake.” This matter will be more fully explained in the account of Persia.a

Like his father, Cyaxares perceived that it would not be possible for the Medes to extend and maintain their conquests westward so long as he had to dread the rivalry of the Assyrian Empire, so lately the mistress of those regions. Consequently he put into practice the lesson which his father had received from the Assyrians. The as yet untrained hordes of Medians were evidently no match for the better military organisation of the Assyrians and the military skill of the Assyrian generals.[444] Cyaxares, therefore, began as became a warlike prince with the remodelling of his army, dividing his troops, after the pattern of the Assyrians, into the various arms—spearmen, bowmen, and horsemen—and fortifying his citadel, Ecbatana. Then he again ventured to attack Assyria, this time with better success. The Assyrian army was beaten in Nineveh at last, and was surrounded. But an unexpected event came to the assistance of the hard-pressed Ninevites—the Scythians invaded Media.

Their invasion compelled Cyaxares to evacuate Assyria, and for a time Nineveh breathed again. But only for a short time. Cyaxares succeeded in putting an end to the Scythian domination in his kingdom in the course of a few years.

About 609 the Median army under the command of Cyaxares appeared for the second time at the gates of Nineveh. According to Berosus, the Babylonian king, whose son Nebuchadrezzar had married the Median king’s daughter, also took part in this siege. It is easy to understand how it was that Herodotus knew nothing of this, for the Persians were his authorities. But he is certainly right in assigning the chief rôle to the Medes, of whom Abydenus says nothing, for from this time forward they kept possession of Assyria itself; and he is also right in placing the taking of Nineveh during the period of Cyaxares’ government, and not, like Berosus and the authors who follow him, in the time of Astyages, since the latter did not ascend the throne of Media before 584 B.C. It is sufficient that Nineveh fell, and Assyria passed to the power of the Medes, who at the same time acquired the dominion over the North and the countries of Asia Minor as far as the Halys. All other provinces of the fallen empire as far as the Mediterranean Sea, including probably that part of ancient Assyria whose capital was the city of Asshur, and also Kharran and Carchemish, fell to Babylonia.

We have no historical account of the details connected with the fall of Nineveh. The story of the last Assyrian king, Asshur-etil-ili, or, as some authorities call him, Saracus,[28] which represents him in his despair burning himself with his palace and his treasures, is a popular tale which is not indeed impossible, but probably arose by confusion with Shamash-shum-ukin’s end. Nineveh was so completely desolated that when Xenophon passed with the Ten Thousand in the year 401 B.C. he took the ruins for the remains of Median towns destroyed by the Persians. Subsequently a fortress, Ninus, seems to have been built there by the Parthians. Calah also once more rose from its rubbish heaps after lying desolate for a long time. Arbela remained untouched, and it is therefore probable that it fell unresisting into the hands of the conquerors. But the Assyrian monarchy was gone forever.

The Assyrian monarchy was gone, but not the empire at whose head the kings of Asshur had stood. It has been matter of astonishment that so powerful an empire, to which through a series of centuries the whole of western Asia had been subdued, could have been so suddenly overturned by the fall of the capital. But this surprise proceeds from an incorrect conception of history. Events had long prepared the fall of Nineveh. The keen eye of Esarhaddon had already perceived that it would be safer to remove the centre of the empire to Babylon. His son Asshurbanapal, a less acute statesman than he, but a great king and a strong administrator, had once more attempted to secure the hegemony for Assyria. In this he had succeeded, being supported by favourable circumstances and the influence of his own personality. But when the sceptre fell from his strong hand, little[445] more was needed to put an end to the Assyrian dominion, and that end was only a question of time. However, the empire survived for a few years longer, though not in its full vigour. The hegemony now passed again to Babylon; but not unimpaired, for, since Media had conquered Nineveh, the lion’s share of Assyria itself fell to the Median kingdom, together with those northern and northwestern provinces which had been lost long before. But the Assyrian survived in the new Babylonian Empire, which continued its policy of conquest, and the Greeks, who not long afterwards called the Babylonians themselves Assyrians, were in this not so very far from the truth. But the days of the Semitic dominion were hastening to their end. Even the new monarchy under Babylon’s hegemony could only be propped up by the force of Nebuchadrezzar’s personality. His feeble successors were in no condition to prevent the spread of the Median power nor the rise of the Persian monarchy, which had grown to such proportions by the conquest of Elam, until the genius of Cyrus founded a dominion which soon embraced the four ancient empires—the Median, the Elamite, the Assyrio-Babylonian, and the Egyptian—and gave the sceptre of western Asia to the Aryans.

The sense of relief which fell on the oppressed nations at the downfall of the scourge of Asia can be gathered from the rejoicing accents of the Jewish prophets. What an Isaiah, a Micah, had not dared to hope, Nahum and Zephaniah saw approach and actually happen. Nahum is convinced that the fate of Thebes will soon overtake Nineveh. Her merchants, multiplied as the stars of heaven, her crowned, her captains, her whole people, they shall be scattered like flying grasshoppers, and no man shall gather them. “All that hear the bruit of thee shall clap their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?” (Nahum iii. 19.) And Zephaniah (ii. 13-15), his contemporary, sees with satisfaction the desolation of the proud city, who thought herself so safe and boasted herself to be the first and the only one, but now had become desolate and a place for beasts, in whose ruins the bittern and the screech-owl lodge.c

FOOTNOTES

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[446]

CHAPTER VI. RENASCENCE AND FALL OF BABYLON

Nowhere is there a more striking illustration of national regeneration than is furnished by the story of the new Babylonian Empire. Freed from Assyrian thraldom, Babylon, the old, old city, came forward to take the place of the fallen Nineveh as the world-metropolis.

It has been customary to think and speak of the new Babylonian Empire as evidencing the rejuvenation of an old people. In one sense this view has full validity. But it must not be supposed that the new Babylonians who came to power when Nineveh fell were the bona fide descendants of the rulers of old Babylonia. New blood had made itself felt in the old race; indeed, without its influence it is highly improbable that the rejuvenation could have been effected. The outsiders who made their influence felt with such potency to restore and rejuvenate the old empire, are known as the Chaldeans. The precise origin of this people is in doubt. It is held to be established, however, that they were Semitic, and hence could claim cousinship with the Babylonians and Assyrians. They inhabited the Sea Lands to the south of Mesopotamia at an early date, and have been supposed to come originally from Arabia. They are heard of from time to time in Babylonian and Assyrian annals as a half-barbaric and often troublesome people, divided into various tribes or clans or petty principalities, bearing such unfamiliar names as Bit-Silani, Bit-Sa’alli, and Bit-Sala.

It is supposed by modern orientalists that the Chaldeans long had their eyes upon the fertile regions of the North, and even, from time to time, been presumptuous enough to cross swords with the Babylonians and Assyrians in the hope of dethroning them. Certain it is that the rulers of the North had at various times waged war against their less civilised cousins of the Sea Lands. Yet the evidence does not seem to be very clear as to the precise share which the Chaldeans took in the new movement inaugurated in Babylon with the death of the last really powerful Assyrian king, Asshurbanapal. The name of the new ruler who now came to power in Babylon was Nabopolassar; but it cannot be asserted with confidence that he was of Chaldean origin. It is held, however, that the influences that dominated the kingdom under his reign were clearly Chaldean; though considering the vagueness that surrounds the entire subject, it must be admitted that this assertion is much easier to make than to prove. Still, all that we know about the degeneration of old nations elsewhere, and the extreme difficulty of resuscitating a senescent people, except by a mixture of races, tends to[447] confirm the theory that a race relatively new to civilisation was chiefly instrumental in working the miracle of Babylonian regeneration.

In any event, the people who for something less than a century made Babylon a great centre of world-influence were known to their contemporaries and to succeeding generations as Chaldeans rather than as Babylonians. Just to what extent the old Babylonian people shared in the new work, can perhaps never be known; but the question is relatively unimportant, because in any event it was a people of the same old Semitic stock that carried on the historic story.

The most brilliant period of the new Babylonian Empire came soon after the fall of Nineveh, in the reign of the world-famous king, Nebuchadrezzar, the monarch who built the marvellous wall about the city and the fabulous hanging gardens; the conqueror who overthrew the Phœnicians and carried the Israelites into captivity.

A peculiar interest attaches to the period of the immediate successors of Nebuchadrezzar because the Babylonian captivity of the Israelites still continued, to which the Hebrew writers made such extended references. The famous account in the Book of Daniel of the feast of Belshazzar, with its brief but graphic reference to the alleged tragic end of the Babylonian king, and the overthrow of Babylon itself at the hands of “Darius the Mede,” have furnished never-to-be-forgotten pictures to all subsequent generations. The modern archæologist has rudely shattered some of these treasured images. Thus the Book of Daniel makes allusion to the overthrow of Babylon in these words: “Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.… In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.” (Daniel v. 1, 2, 30, 31.)

But within the past generation inscriptions have come to light proving, to the amazement of a keenly interested world, that no king named Belshazzar ever reigned in Babylon; and that the name of the monarch overthrown by Cyrus the Persian or Elamite—not by “Darius the Mede”—was Nabonidus. Nabonidus had a son, Belshazzar, but he never ruled. This Nabonidus was not the son of Nebuchadrezzar or his immediate successor, three successive rulers after Nebuchadrezzar having reigned before he came to the throne. It is clear from inscriptions of Nabonidus and of Cyrus his conqueror that Babylon was overthrown without a struggle. A cylinder inscription by Cyrus tells the story: the first part of which, translated by the Rev. C. J. Ball, is as follows: “The continual offering he made to cease … he (es)tablished in the cities the worship of Merodach, the King of the Gods, he exalted (?) His name … by a yoke unrelaxing he ruined them all. At their lamentation the Lord of the Gods waxed very wroth … the Gods who dwelt among them forsook Their abode. In wrath because he brought them into Shu-anna (i.e. Babylon), Merodach … He turned towards all the districts whose dwellings were thrown down. And (to) the people of Shinar and Accad, who were become as dead, He turned (His regard?): He showed compassion upon all the lands together. He looked for, He found him, yea, He sought out an upright Prince, after His own heart, whom He took by his hand, Cyrus, king of the city of Anshan; He named his name; to the kingdom of the whole world He called him by na(me).[448] The land of Qutû (and) all the Umman-Manda he humbled to his feet; the Blackheaded folk, whom his hands subdued,—in faithfulness and righteousness he looked after them. Merodach, the great Lord, the guardian of His people, joyfully beheld his good deeds and his upright heart. To His own city Babylon his march He commanded; He put them on the road to Tin-tir (i.e. Babylon); like a comrade and helper He marched at his side. His great hosts, whose number like the waters of a river could not be known, with their weapons girded on, advanced beside him. Without skirmish or battle He made him enter Shu-anna. His own city Babylon He spared from distress; Nabonidus the king, who feared him not, He delivered up to him. The people of Tin-tir in a body, the entire land of Shinar and Accad, the nobles and grandees, bowed down before Him, kissed His feet, rejoiced at His accession; their faces brightened.”

The accounts given by Nabonidus himself confirm this record of Cyrus. It would appear, then, that the Hebrew chroniclers, gifted rather with the poetical imagination than with the calm historical sense, confused the Babylonian conquest of Cyrus with a later campaign of his successor, Darius. But no mere substitution of the cold facts of history can ever rob the world of the beautiful traditional picture of the feast of Belshazzar. Here, as elsewhere, myth must be allowed to hold its own as the embodiment of the spirit of history. Myth and history coincide as to the fact that the old dynasty in new Babylonia was overthrown. And with that overthrow the sceptre of world-influence passed from the hands of the Semitic race forever.

CONTEMPORARY CHRONOLOGY

The epoch of the new Babylonian Empire covers a period of time from about 615 to 538 B.C., approximately three-quarters of a century. We have already, at the beginning of this book, outlined the position of contemporary civilisations during the entire sweep of Assyrian and new Babylonian history; but it may be well briefly to recapitulate the position of other nations during the epoch of new Babylonian domination, that a clearer picture of the time may be before the eyes as we view the details of Babylonian history.

While reading of the achievements of Nebuchadrezzar and his successors, then, it will be well to recall that:

Egypt under the XXVIth Dynasty enjoys a brief period of rejuvenescence as a world-power; curiously linked in time with the new awakening of her old-time rival, Babylonia;

In India, at about this period, Buddha lives and founds the religion that is to bear his name;

Greece and Rome are in a relative youth, not yet reckoning time from a fixed era, and only beginning to make secure records on which future generations may build. Their civilisation does not compare in importance with that of Babylon, which is the recognised centre of culture, looking upon these “new” nations in the west as utter barbarians;

Phœnicia is far past the zenith of its power; Samaria has fallen; Jerusalem is to become subject to Babylon itself;

In Asia Minor, Sardis, the capital of Lydia, is waxing in power.

But the coming nation of the epoch is Persia, which turns the tables on its fellow, Manda, hitherto the stronger of the half-civilised pair of nations, and which finally, under Cyrus, captures Babylon itself, and assumes undisputed sovereignty over the whole of southwestern Asia.a

[449]

NABOPOLASSAR AND NEBUCHADREZZAR

Nabopolassar (Nabu-apal-usur, i.e. “Nabu protect the heir”), according to the Ptolemaic canon, reigned from 625 B.C. (the date of his accession thus being 626) until 605 B.C., in which year he died, shortly before the victory won by his son Nebuchadrezzar over the Egyptians at Carchemish, having been in ill health before Nebuchadrezzar started for Syria. We have seen how immediately upon his accession to the throne of the Pharaohs, Neku II profited by the impotence of the Assyrian kingdom, which was enfeebled to the last degree by long years of Scythian incursions, to penetrate into the Hamath district.

[He encountered the army of Judah at Meggido—the same historical locality where, a thousand years before, Tehutimes III had vanquished the combined forces of Syria and Phœnicia. The king of Jerusalem was slain on the field, and his army, retreating in terror to the capital, made his young son, Jehoahaz, king, ignoring the claims of Eliakim, the eldest, probably because he was in favour of submitting to Neku. Pharaoh now proceeded, unmolested, to Riblah in Cœle-Syria, where he made his headquarters, and confident in his mastery over Judah, ordered Jehoahaz to appear before him. When the new king arrived he was thrown into chains and Eliakim put in his place under the name of Jehoiakim.]

Neku’s ambition was next directed to the conquest of the whole of northern Syria; a project which he actually accomplished to a great extent during the years 608 to 606, whilst the Babylonians, with their Median allies, were besieging Nineveh. He must certainly have advanced as far as Carchemish, since that was the spot where the Egyptian and Babylonian forces met in 605. The fate of Syria was sealed thereby; it became a province of Babylonia even as it had once been a province of Assyria, and Judah became a vassal kingdom to Babylonia.

Thus Nabopolassar, who died in 605, while his son was on the march for Syria, only just missed the satisfaction of seeing the new kingdom of Babylonia which he had founded enter upon the heritage of the Assyrian Empire, out of which the western province could least of all be spared. He did not see it: instead the news of his father’s death reached the young Nebuchadrezzar (Nabu-kudur-usur, i.e. “Nabu protect the crown”) shortly after the victory of the Egyptians, which decided the fate of Syria for the time being; and leaving his generals to follow up the victory, he had to return to Babylon in hot haste to assume the royal dignity that awaited him. There he received the crown at the hands of the great nobles without encountering any obstacles, and for the long period of his glorious reign, which lasted forty-two years (604-562) he guided the destinies of his country, extended and strengthened its borders, and thus made Babylonia a great power, and Babylon one of the most splendid and illustrious cities of ancient times. If we further take into consideration that it was he who likewise conquered Syria for Babylonia, we cannot but acknowledge his claim to be counted the first ruler who entered upon the full possession of Assyria and consolidated it.

Amid all the many and sometimes detailed inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar which have been found in the ruins of Babylon and other cities, not one contains any account of his campaigns; but from a passage in the preamble of the great inscription of the kingdom, we see that in spite of his preference for building and other peaceful labours he was a mighty warrior. It runs: “Under his mighty protection (i.e. that of the god Marduk) I have passed through far countries, distant mountains, from the upper sea even to the[450] lower sea (i.e. probably from the Gulf of Issus to the mouth of the Nile) far-reaching ways, closed paths where my step was stayed and my foot could not stand, a road of hardships, a way of thirst; the disobedient I subdued and took the adversaries captive, the land I guided aright, the people I caused to be seized; I carried away the bad and the good among them, silver and gold and precious stones, copper, palm wood and cedar wood, whatsoever was costly, in gorgeous abundance; the products of the mountains and that which the sea yielded, brought I as a gift of great weight, as a rich tribute into my city of Babylon before his (the god’s) face.” And although the different campaigns of which we know are distributed over almost the whole of his long reign, we find mention of only one short war against Aahmes of Egypt in the thirty-seventh year of it.

With regard to these wars, most of them aimed at completing the work begun at the battle of Carchemish, and more particularly at preventing further interference on the part of Egypt, and at banishing her influence completely from Babylonian territory, which had now been extended to her very frontier. It was probably in the third year after Nebuchadrezzar’s battle (therefore in 602 B.C.) that Syria was completely incorporated into the Babylonian kingdom, leaving him free to think of displaying his power in the eyes of Jehoiakim, whom Neku had set up as king in Jerusalem, by advancing against him with an army. The desired result promptly followed, and from 601 to 599 Jehoiakim became tributary to the king of the Chaldeans. In the fourth year, 598, the king of Judah withheld the tribute, probably at the instigation of Egypt. When the Babylonians invaded Judah (probably at the beginning of 587) Jehoiakim was just dead; his son Jehoiachin (known also as Jeconiah) was besieged at Jerusalem and, seeing further resistance useless, surrendered to Nebuchadrezzar. He was carried away captive to Babylon with his family and nearly all the princes, warriors, masons, and smiths; but, once there, their lot was no hard one, for they were permitted to settle without molestation and to exercise their own religion. A great number of them lived thus at Tel-Abib (i.e. “heap of ruins”) on the canal Chebar [a canal found near Nippur and now called Kabaru] as we know from the chronicles of Ezekiel, who was one of them. Jerusalem was not destroyed, but Jehoiachin’s kinsman, Mattaniah (another son of Josiah), was set over the few inhabitants that remained there as a vassal of Babylonia, under the new name of Zedekiah (595-587). The newly installed sovereign was a weak man, who by his own good will would have been a loyal vassal; but ultimately in spite of the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah, who fully realised the true state of affairs, he threw in his lot with the war party, who relied on the help of Egypt, and rebelled against Babylonia.

In 589 Psamthek II (Neku’s successor) himself was succeeded by the young and warlike Uah-ab-Ra (the Hophra of the Bible and the Apries of the Greeks), who sent a fleet to the assistance of the Phœnicians in an attempt they made to revolt. Thereupon Nebuchadrezzar marched his troops into Syria and set up his headquarters at Riblah, the old headquarters of Neku, so as to operate from thence against Zedekiah, Tyre, and Pharaoh. How Jerusalem was besieged (589-587) and destroyed, how in the meantime Uah-ab-Ra’s army was vanquished, and how Tyre was then invested (the siege lasting thirteen years) and forced to pay tribute, if no more—all these events are likewise known to us only from other sources than cuneiform inscriptions, and the detailed description of them, at least in so far as they relate to the downfall of the kingdom of Judah, and thus form a part of (not the[451] opening era of) Jewish history, lies ready to every reader’s hand in the books of the Bible of which we have given a brief outline. As for Tyre (after the siege) she remained under the rule of her own kings, though as a vassal to Babylonia. All the worse was the fate which, in 587, overtook Judah, whose hopes had been so cruelly deceived, for not only was the city utterly destroyed (see the moving laments in the so-called Book of Lamentations), and the king, blinded and fettered, carried away into captivity after seeing his sons slain before his face; but with the exception of the poor, the day labourers absolutely necessary for the cultivation of the soil and vineyards, all who had escaped the previous deportation were carried away by the Babylonian king to the “waters of Babylon” (Psalm 137).

[While his soldiers were keeping their long and weary station under the walls of Tyre, Nebuchadrezzar turned his attention to another important matter. Because the people of Judah and Tyre had looked to Egypt for assistance, they had given the Babylonian king much trouble. Egypt, therefore, must suffer for this; so that she would not feel inclined to repeat her action of sending an army to Zedekiah’s aid. A new Egyptian campaign was planned.]

A fragment at the beginning of which a prayer (“Thou destroyest my enemies and makest my heart to rejoice”) was set down, assigns the above-mentioned campaign in Egypt to the year 568 (i.e. the thirty-seventh year of the reign). The passage which refers to it,—“Year 37 of Nebuchadrezzar, king of (Babylonia to the land of) Misir, (i.e. Egypt) to give a battle, he marched and (his troops A-ma)-a-su, the king of Misir assembled and …” leaves no doubt that Aahmes or Amasu is the king here meant, for only the year before, in 569, Aahmes had revolted against Uah-ab-Ra and forced him to recognise him (Aahmes) as co-regent. He soon afterward became sole ruler in Egypt; and, as such, he died in the year 528, shortly before the conquest of Egypt by the Persians. Nebuchadrezzar meanwhile contented himself with humbling the pride of Egypt, and refrained from conquering the country, which even had it been successfully done would but have raised difficulties for the Babylonian kingdom to cope with. His chief aim, to keep Syria and Palestine clear of Egyptian influence, was attained by the campaign.

Of Nebuchadrezzar’s other military expeditions, the one mentioned (Jeremiah xlix. 28-33) against the Bedouins of Kedar and the Arab tribes, which had settled to the east of Palestine, leads us again to the borders of the Occident. The town of Teredon, at the mouth of the Euphrates, was founded at this time as a bulwark against the Bedouins, and by reason of its situation became, like Gerrha, on the Persian Gulf, and Thapsacus, Tiphsah, on the middle Euphrates, a mercantile station of some importance. Not until the time of the New Kingdom of Babylonia did a flourishing trade develop along the Euphrates, with Armenia and the east coast of Arabia for its extreme poles; and from the reign of Nebuchadrezzar dates the part played by Babylon, his capital, as the greatest emporium of the ancient world, and the proverbial meaning which the name of Babylon has retained down to our times, to signify the worst aspects (luxury and license) of a capital city.

From Babylon and the mention of her trade it would be a natural transition to the buildings erected by Nebuchadrezzar, if we were not first bound to mention the northwest and east, which are of extreme importance from an historical point of view, and in which Nebuchadrezzar took the part of a mediator, if no more, between the Medes and the Lydians.

[452]

To return to the buildings erected by Nebuchadrezzar, which, up to this time form the subject of nearly all the inscriptions discovered, the latter all show his character in a favourable light. In all we find evidence of the paternal care of a prince zealous for the welfare of his dominions, and of a sincere and heartfelt piety which by no means leaves the impression that it is a mere form of speech. We can listen to his own words prefixed to his account of the buildings he erected and revealing something of his heart.

“Since the Lord, Marduk, created me, and made fair preparation for my birth from the womb, from that time forward, when I was born and created, I have visited the holy places of God, and walked in the ways of God. To Marduk, my Lord, I prayed; I took up my parable in prayer to him, the speech of my heart came (before him) to him I spoke: ‘Eternal, Holy, Lord of all things, for the king, whom thou lovest, whose name thou callest according to thy good pleasure, guide his name well, lead (or guard) him in a straight path. I, the prince, who obeyeth thee, am the work of thy hands, thou didst create me, thou didst commit unto me the royal dominion over the whole people, according to thy grace, O Lord which thou sendest forth upon all. Teach me to love thy august sovereignty, let the fear of thy divinity be in my heart, bestow (upon me) that which is pleasing unto thee, thou who preparest my life.’ Thereupon the Highest, the Glorious, the first among the gods, the august Marduk, heard my supplication and accepted my prayers, he caused his great majesty to rule favourably, he caused the fear of God to abide in my heart, I fear his majesty.” And the conclusion runs: “Babylon, the capital of the land, I established with the hills of the forest. To Marduk, my lord, I prayed and lifted up my hand: ‘Marduk, lord, the first of gods, thou mighty prince, thou hast created me, thou hast committed to me royal dominion over the multitude of the people, I love the majesty of thy courts as my precious life. Save thy city of Babylon. I have made me no other capital out of all inhabited places. As I love the fear of thy divinity and seek thy majesty, so incline graciously to my supplication (literally, to the raising of my hands), hear my prayers. I am the King, the Restorer, who delights thy heart, the zealous ruler, the restorer of all thy cities. At thy command, O merciful Marduk, may the house which I have built endure to all eternity, may I satisfy myself in its abundance. May I come to old age therein, may I satisfy myself with my glory, may I receive the weighty tribute therein from the kings of all regions of the world and from all mankind. From the horizon of the heavens unto the meridian and at (?) the rising sun may I have no enemies nor possess any adversaries (lit. them that put me in fear). May my posterity bear rule therein over the black-headed people to all eternity.’”

Nebuchadrezzar, himself, attached the greatest importance to the restoration of the temples of E-sagila and E-zida, as being the most ancient sanctuaries of Babylon, and in his briefest inscriptions, the stamp-marks on bricks, whether used for the building of these two temples or any other edifice, always had added to his title of king, that of restorer of the temples of E-sagila and E-zida. Of greater interest to us, however, since we can still admire the ruins of it, is a temple which is only briefly referred to in a few words in the long inscription, but of which we have a detailed account in another, shorter inscription, namely, the Temple of the Seven Spheres of Heaven and Earth, which was built in seven stories near (or as a ziggurat of) E-zida at Borsippa.

But although Nebuchadrezzar devoted most thought to his beloved Babylon (and to Borsippa) he in nowise neglected other seats of worship of[453] the country. The temple of the Sun, at Sippar, the temple of a god as yet unidentified, in the city of Baz (Paszitu), the temple of Idi-Anu (the Eye of Anu), at Dilbat, the temple of Lugal-Amarda (Marad), E-Anna, the temple of Ishtar, at Erech, the temple of the Sun, at Larsa, and the temple of the Moon, at Erech, are enumerated one after another as having been rebuilt by Nebuchadrezzar. With better right than his father he calls himself on one of the Abu-Habba cylinders “the ruler of Sumer and Accad, who laid the foundation of the land” (or as Winckler translates it, “made fast the foundations of the land”), for in truth his new creations extended over the whole territory that had been Sumer and Accad as we are familiar with it in ancient Babylonian history, from the reigns of Ur-Ba’u of Ur onward. Under him, after a long sleep (lasting in places for a thousand years) among her ruins, the whole of Babylonia kept the festival of her resurrection, and joyous sacrificial hymns resounded through the length and breadth of the land during Nebuchadrezzar’s long and prosperous reign, as in the days of her distant prime.

To complete the picture of Nebuchadrezzar’s capital, we must in conclusion cast a glance at the vast fortifications with which this king girdled the city he had created, and so insured it against the most formidable assault. Nebuchadrezzar did not rest satisfied with completely restoring and enlarging these fortifications (a work that his father had begun, since they had again been impaired); he included a strip of arable land some four thousand cubits (about two to three kilometres) in breadth, on the farther side of the rampart Nimitti-Bel, within another “mountain high” wall, and made it a part of the outworks, thus casting a gigantic threefold girdle of ramparts (or walls) and moats about the city. Nor was that enough: “To quell the countenance of the enemy that he should not harass the (threefold) encompassment of Babylon, I surrounded the land with mighty streams, comparable unto the waters of the sea; to cross them was as it were to cross the ocean. To render an inundation from their midst (the midst of these artificial courses) impossible, I heaped up masses of earth, I set up brick dams round about them.”

And herewith we must take leave of this truly great ruler, and turn to his successors, who, unhappily, did not resemble him, and of whom the last, Nabonidus by name, could alone be compared to him in his zeal for the restoration and adornment of the various temples of the country, though in all other respects he fell far below the greatness of his mighty ancestor. This inferiority is the reason that the New Babylonian Kingdom hurried so swiftly to its unexpected end.

THE FOLLOWERS OF NEBUCHADREZZAR

We know from the Ptolemaic canon, Hommel goes on, that after Nebuchadrezzar’s death (562) Illoarudamos (probably a clerical error for Illoarudakos, i.e. Amil-Marduk), the biblical Evil-Merodach, ascended the throne and died in the second year of his reign (560). Berosus calls him a son of Nebuchadrezzar, and describes his short reign as unjust and licentious, this being the reason why he was murdered by Neriglissor (Nergal-shar-usur), his sister’s husband, and thus son-in-law to Nebuchadrezzar. As a matter of fact, in direct confirmation of the chronological statements of the Ptolemaic canon, the only contract tablets that have been discovered of the reign of this king, date from his accession, about July 22, 560 B.C. He is mentioned in the Old Testament, in the last four verses of the 2nd Book of Kings;[454] “And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evil-Merodach, king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, did lift up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison. And he spake kindly to him and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon; and changed his prison garments, and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his life. And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.” It is evident that the Bible here refers to Amil-Marduk, for on the twenty-seventh Adar 560 this king was still upon the throne (see the above date, 4th Abu), whilst the first well-authenticated date of Neriglissor is 25th Marsheshwan, i.e. about 10th November of that same year.

From the reign of Amil-Marduk we have no inscription, but we are in better case as regards his successor, Nergal-shar-usur (the Nergal-sharezer of the Bible; Berosus, Neriglissor, Ptolemaic canon, Neriga-solasar). He reigned from 559-556, for there are two inscriptions on cylinders and a brief inscription on brick which we may assign to this reign. The subject appears to be some restoration in the shrine of E-zida at Babylon. Where the inscription again becomes legible, the king gives an account of the construction of a canal, the waters of which had gone away and withdrawn, and of palace building.

The following questions are suggested by these inscriptions. Firstly, who was his father, the Bel-shum-ishkum twice mentioned in them? Let it suffice here to note the possibility that he may be identical with a former king of Assyria, the son of Asshurbanapal, who certainly did not reign more than a few months. The chronology presents no obstacle to the acceptance of this hypothesis. Let us then assume that Bel-shum-ishkum was born about 645; he would then be about twenty years of age at the death of Asshurbanapal, and about forty at the fall of Nineveh, after which he probably found a refuge at the Babylonian court. By that time (606) his son Nergal-shar-usur might very well be about eighteen years old; if we take this for granted, then the latter was thirty-seven in the year 587, in which two persons of the same name (Nergal-sharezer, Jeremiah xxxix. 3) are mentioned among Nebuchadrezzar’s nobles (one among the “princes” in general, the other amongst the officials of highest rank), sixty-four at his accession in 560 B.C. and not quite seventy when he died, which gives a great show of probability to his identity with one or other of these two Nergal-sharezers. Another question to which it would be very interesting to find an answer is that of the wars of Nergal-shar-usur, for, short as his reign was, it is evident from the two cylinder inscriptions that he did wage wars. Unfortunately we have no more exact information on the subject; but if we consider that as early as the year 555, that is, only a year after Nergal-shar-usur’s death, disorders of such magnitude had broken out in Mesopotamia, due to the “Manda warriors” under the leadership of their king Ishtuvegu (Astyages), that is to say, to Median hordes, that the Babylonians appealed to Kurush (Cyrus), king of Anshan, who did, in fact, succeed in driving the Medes back, we may be sure that the earliest incursions of the Manda into Babylonian territory (of which Mesopotamia had formed a part since the fall of Nineveh) took place in the reign of Neriglissor. This hypothesis is directly confirmed by the tenor of Nabonidus’ account of the invasion. In that case Neriglissor’s warlike enterprises were not crowned with brilliant success, or at all events did not expel the Manda from Mesopotamia altogether.

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THE REIGN OF NABONIDUS (556-538 B.C.)

On the death of Neriglissor in 556, he was succeeded, according to Berosus, by his son Labassarachos or Labarosoarchodos (in inscriptions Labashi-Marduk), but it appears that a Babylonian of high rank, Nabu-naidu (“Nabu is glorious”), the son of Nabu-balatsu-iqbi (“Nabu hath foretold his life”), was immediately proclaimed king by an opposition party, and although Labashi-Marduk made head against Nabu-naidu (or Nabonidus, as he is usually known) for nine months, the latter dates the beginning of his reign from the death of Neriglissor. According to Berosus, Labashi-Marduk was a child, and fell victim to a conspiracy, having already betrayed tokens of a bad disposition.

According to the Ptolemaic canon, Nabonidus reigned seventeen years, which agrees with the circumstance that the latest of the numerous contract tablets belonging to his reign up to this time discovered are dated the 5th of Ulul (the middle of August) in his seventeenth year. He concerned himself chiefly with the restoration of old temples elsewhere than in Babylon, as those at Ur, Larsa, Sippar, and even at Kharran in Mesopotamia, that is, the oldest sanctuaries in the country; while in Babylon, where he certainly resided, if only at intervals, he seems to have done nothing except to proceed with the building of the walls on the river bank.[29] Nabonidus was actuated not merely by religious motives, but by an interest in history and archæology, which grew to be an absolute mania with him. His inscriptions give us minute information as to how he dug and hunted for the foundation cylinders of these primitive temples, nor does he fail to deal many a sly hit at his predecessors (Nebuchadrezzar, for example), who had not always conscientiously done this, and had consequently many a time built something that was not in the original plan. When, after long search, Nabonidus found these cylinders, often buried deep down in the ground, he reproduced the tenor of them exactly, frequently giving the precise number of years between his own reign and that of the ancient Babylonian king in question, and so providing us with the most valuable data for determining the earliest periods of Babylonian history. In this way we have learned the date of Naram-Sim, the ancient king of Agade, of Shagarakti-Buriash [sometimes read Shagarakti-Shuriash], and lastly, as it would appear, of Khammurabi (although in this case the computation is incorrect), together with many other data of historical importance. For this reason the reign of Nabonidus is to us among the most important in Babylonian history, but his passion for archæology—which seems to have made him forget the world entirely, and, in particular, overlook the danger with which the victories of Cyrus menaced Babylonia—was of less service to himself, and ultimately cost him his throne and liberty.

We have already mentioned the fragment of the Babylonian chronicle treating of the reign of Nabonidus and the conquest of Babylon and the whole Babylonian empire by Cyrus. We will now regard the public events of the reign of the last native king of Babylonia in the light of this text. In the first year mention is made of a military expedition with the object of subjugating a prince of whose name, unfortunately, nothing (or at most the termination, shu’ishshi) has been preserved, but whom we should, perhaps, be justified in regarding as the chieftain of a Median tribe.

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From the first section of the cylinder-inscription of Abu-Habba we see that if, after the deliverance of Kharran, Nabonidus summoned his troops from the frontier of Egypt and onward to the Gulf of Issus and the Persian Gulf, to the work of building, or the collection of building material; these were not military enterprises in the strict sense of the term (and this is characteristic), but merely expeditions for peaceful ends, which were all the easier for Nabonidus to achieve, because, since the reign of Nebuchadrezzar the Babylonians had held undisputed possession of the “Occident” right up to the Egyptian frontier. The only exception to this rule seems to be the account of the beginning of the first year (or the beginning of his reign) given in the chronicle, where, among other things, it is said, “the king summoned his warriors.” But this expedition was, in all likelihood, only the less laborious gleaning left to Nabonidus after the conquest of the Medes by Cyrus.

The next event narrated in the chronicle is the final defeat of the Medes by Cyrus, which cannot, therefore, have taken place later than the sixth year of the reign of Nabonidus, that is, 550 B.C., and may have been earlier.

The account of the seventh year is difficult to understand, but this much is plain, that in those years Nabonidus was not present at the New Year’s celebration at E-sagila, nay, that the festival in question did not take place at all. We do not know why this was so, but we may conjecture that the reason was a hierarchical revolution, a kind of vote of want of confidence in the king, who was pursuing his works and researches in the temples of Sippar, Ur, Larsa, and other cities, heedless of the danger that menaced the country from Cyrus.

Of greater importance, historically, is the account of the ninth year (547 B.C.). After repeating the statement concerning the non-celebration of the feast of Bel, it proceeds: On the 5th of Nisan the king’s mother died in the fortified camp on the far side (Sha am? = sha ammat) of the Euphrates above Sippar; for three days mourning prevailed and lamentation, in the month of Sivan there was mourning (official) for the queen-mother throughout the (whole) land of Accad. In the Nisan (of this year) Kurush (Cyrus), king of the land of Parsu, had summoned his warriors and crossed the Tigris below Arbela, in order to invade Asia Minor in the following month, Airu, “from the king he took away his silver and goods, his own children he caused to mount the [funeral pyre], after his children and the king (he himself, Cyrus?) were therein.”

We know from Herodotus that an expedition of Cyrus against King Crœsus of Lydia took place at this very time, and ended with the siege and reduction of Sardis and the fall of the kingdom of Lydia, after an indecisive battle had been fought in Cappadocia, near Pteria (Boghaz-köi), a place since made famous by the discovery of a Hittite bas-relief. Nabonidus had joined the alliance between Lydia, Sparta and Aahmes of Egypt, on which Crœsus relied when he began the war against Cyrus; probably he thought he could make an easy conquest of Media and Elam after the defeat he expected Cyrus to suffer in Asia Minor. The Babylonians do not seem to have taken any active part in the struggle after Cyrus’ speedy victory over the Lydians, but nevertheless with that victory the fate of Babylonia was practically sealed. For it was obvious that Cyrus, who had not only ruled over the whole of Media, since the taking of Ecbatana, but was also undisputed master of Armenia right up to the western coast of Asia Minor, and thus had really become emperor (or great king) would take the first opportunity of seizing upon Babylonia and its wealthy Syrian provinces.[457] Moreover, from this time forth he had the best of reasons for regarding Nabonidus as a disloyal neighbour who deserved condign punishment.

In the tenth and eleventh years the chronicle first notes the omission of the Feast of Bel in exactly the same terms as in the case of the seventh and ninth years, and when the narration begins we find ourselves in the seventeenth and last year of the reign of Nabonidus (539 B.C.). After a series of sentences which are very much defaced the narrative proceeds: “In the month of Tammuz (June-July, 539), Kurush [Cyrus] fought a battle at Kish (?) above the canal of Illat (?) against the warriors of the land of Accad; the people of the land of Accad rose up against the ranks of soldiers, on the 14th day (of Tammuz) the city of Sippar was taken without a battle, Nabonidus fled. On the 17th day (i.e. about July 5, 539), Ugbaru (Gobryas), governor of Guti (i.e. the district to the east of Arbela), and the warriors of Kurush marched into E-ki (Babylon); when Nabonidus thereupon entrenched himself in E-ki (Babylon) he was taken captive. Even unto the end of the month the tukkimi (troops?) of the land of Guti encompassed the gates of E-sagila, yet were not weapons of any sort laid upon E-sagila and the (other) temples, nor was the embellishment (i.e. the images and vessels of the temple) taken away. On the 3rd of Marsheshwan (Arakhsamnu, i.e. about October 19), Kurush marched into E-ki, the streets were filled in view of his entry, he established peace in the city; Kurush proclaimed peace to the whole of Tintir (Babylon), he set Ugbaru (Gobryas), his vicegerent, as vicegerent over Babylon, and from the month Kislev even until Adar (November-December, 539—February-March, 538), he caused the gods of the land of Accad, which Nabonidus had caused to be brought into Babylon, to be carried back into their own places. In the same (?) month, on the 11th day, Ugbaru went over and the king dies; from the 27th of the month Adar, even to the 3rd of Nisan (the end of March, 538), there is mourning in Accad, all the people loose (lit. cleave) their hair (?); on the 4th, Kambujiya (Cambyses), the son of Kurush, goes to the temple of the city (?) of Khadkalamasummu.…” What follows is defaced beyond translation, and, to judge from the scraps of lines still decipherable, contains nothing of historic interest; for example, it goes on to speak of the temple of E-Anna at Erech.

Thus we see that Babylon itself received King Cyrus with open arms, and that, even as the Kossæans had usurped and long maintained the mastery of Accad, so now the Persians superseded the native dynasty. The event was therefore no new thing, and, as a matter of fact, Babylonian history proceeds upon the old lines under Cyrus and his successors, so that it is hard to see why most narratives should break off at this point. The national literature and mode of writing continued to flourish, but the history of Babylonia and Assyria, of which the short-lived prosperity of the New Babylonian Kingdom was the last chapter, concluded with the entry of Cyrus into Babylon; the subsequent history of Babylonia is of local interest only, and has no further significance for the world.

Lastly, as regards the important original Babylonian inscription of the reign of Cyrus, which has been referred to before, it most fully confirms the correctness of the impression made by the narrative of the chronicle on every unprejudiced reader. The Babylonians, with the hierarchy of the city of Babylon at their head, were utterly weary of the feeble rule of Nabonidus, who does not seem even to have been of the blood-royal, and hailed Cyrus as deliverer. At the bidding of Cyrus the learned Babylonian scribes were charged to draw up an inscription, and from its contents and wording (which can hardly have been dictated by the king of Persia) we can clearly realise the[458] view of the situation taken by the priestly circles of the country (which governed the populace). From the very beginning, defaced as it is, we perceive that Nabonidus is made the scapegoat for everything. He is represented with having sent forth “to Ur and the other cities oracles that did not beseem them” (i.e. the gods), with “thinking daily upon evil” (?), with having “caused the daily sacrifice to cease” and grossly neglected the worship of the god Marduk; further, with having “let the fortifications of Babylon fall into ruin, so that the lord of the gods was greatly incensed in lamentation thereat,” as well as “with wrath that he had brought in (into E-sagila) the gods (of other Babylonian cities), who were thus constrained to forsake their (former) temples.

Then it came to pass that Marduk “looked upon his friend,” and “laid hold of his hand, Kurush, king of Anshan, was his name called”; “he subdued the land of the Kuti and the whole host of the Manda hordes beneath his feet; he caused the black-headed people to fall into his hands; in righteousness and justice came he unto them.” The god Marduk “bade him to go to Babylon and take the road to Tintir, like a friend and comrade went he at his side, the multitude of his troops, whereof the number, like unto the waters of a river, was not known, girt on the weapons and marched at his side; he (Marduk) caused him to enter Shu-anna (Babylon) without strife or battle; Babylon, his city, he spared with difficulty; Nabonidus the king, who did not fear him, he gave over into his (Kurush’s) hands; all the people of Tintir, the whole multitude of Sumer and Accad, the princes and the ruler who submitted to his dynasty, kissed his feet and rejoiced in his royal dominion; their faces shone. The Lord, who (draweth nigh) with succour, who raiseth the dead to life, who in might bestoweth benefits upon the whole earth, graciously blesseth him (Cyrus) and hath respect unto his name. I, Kurush, King of the world, the mighty King, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Accad, King of the four quarters of the Earth, son of Kambujiya, the great King, the King of the city of Anshan, grandson of Kurush, the great King, the King of the city of Anshan, descendant (libbalbal) of Sispis, the great King, the King of Anshan, the eternal shoot of royalty, whose government Bel and Nabu love, to do good unto his heart and for the superabundance of his joy.” Cyrus then proceeds to lay stress upon his peaceful entry into Babylon and the gladness and rejoicing amidst which he took up his abode there, on how his troops occupied the city in peace and he himself visited the other cities in peace, how he repaired their ruins and loosed their chains (?), how Marduk was gracious towards him and his son Kambujiya (Cambyses), and how, “at Marduk’s august bidding all the kings who dwelt in royal chambers, from all quarters under heaven, from the upper sea even to the lower sea, and likewise the kings of the Occident who inhabit [the desert] and they that dwell in tents,” all brought weighty tribute and kissed his feet at Babylon.

“From … even unto the cities of Asshur and Ishtar-Damiktu (?), the city of Agade, the land of Ishnunnak, the cities of Zambaru, Mi-Turnu and Dur-ilu, even unto the region of the land of Kuti, the cities on the (bank of) Tigris, where their dwelling-place was from of old, I carried the gods that dwelt there back to their places,” “the gods of Sumer, and Accad, whom Nabonidus, to the great indignation of the lord of gods, had caused to be brought into Babylon, I set once more into their shrines in peace at the command of Marduk.”

Such is practically the tenor (and wording) of the Cyrus inscription, which, considered in connection with the chronicle which has come down to[459] us from the reign of Nabonidus, sets this important matter of the transference of the new Babylonian Empire to Cyrus the Achæmeniad in an entirely new light. The termination of the political independence of Babylon came about in quite other guise than the end of Nineveh; there was no bloodshed, no siege, no judgment with fire and devastation. A further act of peace was the permission given by Cyrus to the Jews who dwelt in and about Babylon to return to the Holy Land. This is referred to in the prophecy of the great unknown prophet of the latter half of the Babylonian exile, the so-called Second Isaiah (Isaiah xliv. to the end). “The Lord that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations (the Medes and Lydians) before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.”

The last words involuntarily recall to our minds the gates of Babylon, which opened of themselves to the clement conqueror. And this prophecy, no less than the conduct of the Babylonian priests, shows that Cyrus was preceded by a reputation for clemency; for what would their ready submission have availed the latter, had Cyrus been a savage conqueror like other semi-barbaric tribal chiefs? Pillage and many horrors would then have been the lot of Babylon when she opened her gates to the foreign king. It seems probable, however, that the Babylonians nourished the certain hope that Cyrus would spare them.

Thus the history of Babylonia closes peaceably upon the noble figure of Cyrus, the Achæmeniad prince, who commands our warmest sympathies. Planted in Babylonian soil at the beginning of time, the primitive civilisation of the Sumerians was brought to the flower by the Babylonian Semites, then further developed and transplanted to Asshur and Nineveh. There the conditions grew ripe under which Assyria became the ruling power of the world. After the fall of her empire, the ancient mother-country became for a brief season the centre of the civilisation which had taken its rise there two thousand years before, and this civilisation now passed on as a legacy to the Persians, not to die among them, but to revivify and educate, even as, on the other hand, it drew fresh strength from the youthful vigour of the Indo-Germanic race, untutored as yet, but abundantly endowed with all intellectual gifts.b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER VII. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA

WAR METHODS

In following the political fortunes of Babylonia and Assyria we have necessarily caught glimpses from time to time of the conditions of civilisation which form everywhere the background of the picture. But it is desirable to view some phases of this civilisation more in detail, and an attempt will be made in the present book to summarise these conditions as a whole, and to elaborate certain details in reference to the more interesting or more important themes. Such an attempt within the spacial limits necessarily imposed cannot hope to be altogether satisfactory. In particular it must be borne in mind that we are dealing, or attempting to deal, with a period of time not less than three thousand years in extent, even if we consider only the minimum epoch covered by a tolerably sure chronology.

It is obvious that in such a sweep of time numerous changes must take place in the manners and customs of the people, and multiform alterations must be developed in the various phases of civilisation. This would necessarily be true even if the history of a single people were involved. But, in point of fact, as we have seen, we have here to do with four tolerably distinct peoples—the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans. To attempt a brief exposition of the varied civilisations of these four peoples during a period of several millenniums within brief bounds, would clearly be a presumptuous task were full details accessible as to all the periods involved. But we have already seen that such details are not accessible. Meagre details have come down to us from the Sumerians, and only less meagre ones Babylonians; and the reminiscences of the Chaldeans, notwithstanding their later period in history, are but slightly less vague. It is the Assyrians that must be looked to chiefly for data that can afford us, at best,[461] an inferential knowledge of their predecessors; and we must all along remember that we are to a certain extent seeing with Assyrian eyes in attempting to view the Babylonian civilisation. Still, it should be recalled that important changes in the manners and customs of any people are usually of slow development everywhere, and that they were perhaps particularly so here, because we have to do with the most conservative of races. The Babylonians and Assyrians were own cousins to the Hebrews, and no doubt partook in full measure of what Goethe styles the “obstinate persistency” of that race. The main outline of their civilisation, therefore, probably remained unchanged generation after generation.

On the other hand, it must be understood that the Sumerians, whatever their precise racial affinities, were a very different people from the Semitic races that superseded them. There is reason to believe that they were essentially a creative race, whereas the Semites, and in particular the Assyrians, were pre-eminently copyists and adapters rather than originators. It would appear that all the chief features of the later Assyrian civilisation were adumbrated, if not indeed fully elaborated, in that early day when the Sumerians were dominant in southern Babylonia. Even the cuneiform system of writing, with all its extraordinary complexities, is believed by philologists to give unequivocal evidence of Sumerian origin. But however correct this view may be, we are constrained to view the Sumerians solely in the light of their successors. The monumental remains exhumed from amid the ruins of the palace of Asshurbanapal supply us with the chief documents for the interpretation of a civilisation that had passed away something like three thousand years before this palace itself or its documentary treasures came into being.

This is somewhat as if one were to study the manners and customs of the Italians of to-day in order to gain a knowledge of the civilisation of Rome in the time of the Tarquinians. The parallel is really not quite so complete as it might at first sight appear, for in many respects practical civilisation changed more in the nineteenth century than in all the previous centuries of recorded history. Beyond cavil, the civilisation of the time of Sargon I had far greater resemblance to the time of Asshurbanapal than the Rome of the early kings bears to the Rome of King Victor Emmanuel. Nevertheless, we should bear this corrective view in mind in the alleged attempt to deal with Mesopotamian civilisation as a whole.

OUR SOURCES

The sources of our knowledge of Mesopotamian history have been pretty fully discussed in previous chapters. Beyond the classical traditions, our sole reliance must be placed upon the monuments. And of these the sculptures are by far the most important in their bearings upon the civilisation of the people.

Very little is said, except inferentially, by the written inscriptions, that throws any definite light upon the manners and customs of the people. But fortunately the Assyrians in particular were much given to pictorial presentation of the scenes of at least certain features of their everyday life; their bas-reliefs, therefore, furnish us with the clearest index as to their life customs. The interpretation of these bas-reliefs in this light was first taken up in detail by Sir Henry Layard, and his expositions remain to this day the most complete and satisfactory. We shall have occasion to turn frequently to his pages in the present book, supplementing his accounts with certain elaborations,[462] in particular with reference to the religious and legal documents, based on the more recent readings of the inscriptions.

However much the customs of the Babylonians and Assyrians may have changed in the course of ages, there was one important regard in which there was probably no conspicuous alteration from first to last. This was the character of the government. Like other orientals, the Mesopotamians had no conception of any government except a thoroughly despotic one. They were ruled by kings whose authority was absolute, and whose will was accepted as the sole law. A change of government meant merely the overthrow of one king by some one who, attaining supreme authority, was himself to be recognised as king.

But the assumption and retention of exclusive power in a body politic by one individual presupposes a triumph of physical force. Kingship in its oriental manifestation has its foundation in military power. We find, therefore, that the Babylonian or Assyrian monarch is able to make himself felt and remembered just in proportion as he is a competent military leader. To be a great king he must be a great conqueror. A record of conquests is substantially the whole story of the royal annals. It is a very sanguinary and inhuman story as we have seen.

The texts of the inscriptions deal with results rather than with methods. We are told the names of peoples against whom warfare was waged; lists of captives and booty are not forgotten, the idea being of course to perpetuate the glory of the conqueror. To that end the name of the conqueror himself is always given, the narrative being usually told in the first person; but one never hears so much as the name of a subordinate. It is the king alone to whom credit is to be given.

What the inscriptions lack in the way of reference to details of the art of warfare is supplied by the Assyrian bas-reliefs. These represent armies in action and enable us to form a very clear picture of the war costumes, the weapons, and to a certain extent of the battle methods of the Assyrians. In particular the details are given of the methods of assault by which the Assyrians were accustomed to break down the walls of a rebellious city. Battering-rams and scaling-towers are depicted in the most realistic manner, and are a favourite subject of the artist—partly, no doubt, because they lend themselves to pictorial presentation; partly, perhaps, because the Assyrians excelled in this particular phase of warfare. But other phases of warfare are by no means overlooked. Even such details as the beheading or flaying alive of captives are presented with gruesome realism.

For the reason already stated, our text will have to do chiefly with the art of war as practised by the Assyrians, rather than by their predecessors. Whether any of the implements or methods employed in this relatively late period originated with the Assyrians themselves, we have no present means of deciding. The presumption is, however, that the Assyrian king pursued the art of war in much the same way it had been practised by the old Babylonian kings from time immemorial.a

As the Assyrians possessed disciplined and organised troops, it is probable that they were also acquainted, to a certain extent, with military tactics, and that their battles were fought upon some kind of system. We know that such was the case with the Egyptians; and their monuments show that amongst their enemies, also, there were nations not unacquainted with the military science. They had bodies of troops in reserve; they advanced and retreated in rank, and performed various manœuvres. Although, in the Assyrian sculptures, we have no attempt at an actual representation of the[463] general plan of a battle, as in some Egyptian bas-reliefs, yet from the order in which the soldiers are drawn up before the castle walls, and from the phalanx which they then appear to form, it seems highly probable that similar means were adopted, to resist the assaults of the enemy in the open field.

The king himself, attended by his vizier, his eunuchs, and principal officers of state, was present in battle, and not only commanded, but took an active part in the affray. Even [the traditional] Sardanapalus, when called upon to place himself at the head of his armies to meet the invading [traditional] Medes, showed, a courage equal to the occasion, and repulsed his enemies. Like the Persian monarchs who succeeded, him in the dominion of Asia, the Assyrian king was accompanied to the war, however distant his seat might be, by his wives, his concubines, and his children, and by an enormous retinue of servants. Even his nobles were similarly attended. Their couches were of gold and silver, and the hangings of the richest materials. Vessels of the same precious metals were used at their tables; their tents were made of the most costly stuffs, and were even adorned with precious stones. The canopy or tent of Holofernes was of purple, gold, and emeralds and precious stones; and every man had gold and silver (vessels) out of the king’s house. (Judith ii. 18.) This book contains an interesting account of the luxurious manner of living of the great Assyrian warriors, confirming what has been said in the text, and showing that the Persians were, in this respect, as almost in every other, imitators of the Assyrians. Herodotus (Lib. IX., c. 82 and 83) describes the equipage, furnished with gold and silver, and with various coloured hangings, and the gold and silver couches and tables, found in the tents of Mardonius after the defeat of the Persian army. They had been left by Xerxes when he fled from Greece. They were also accompanied by musicians, who are represented in the sculptures as walking before the warriors, on their triumphant return from battle.

The army was followed by a crowd of sutlers, servants, and grooms; who, whilst adding to its bulk, acted as an impediment upon its movements, and carried ruin and desolation into the countries through which it passed. As this multitude could not depend entirely for supplies upon the inhabitants, whom they unmercifully pillaged, provisions in great abundance, as well as live-stock, were carried with them. Holofernes, in marching from Nineveh with his army, took with him “camels and asses for their carriage, a very great number, and sheep, and oxen, and goats without number, for their provision; and plenty of victuals for every man.”

Quintus Curtius thus describes the march of a Persian army: The signal was given from the tent of the king, on the top of which, so as to be seen by all, was placed an image of the sun, in crystal. The holy fire was borne on altars of silver, surrounded by the priests, chanting their sacred hymns. They were followed by three hundred and sixty-five youths, according to the number of the days in the year, dressed in purple garments. The chariot, dedicated to the supreme deity, or to the sun, was drawn by snow-white horses, led by grooms wearing white garments, and carrying golden wands. The horse especially consecrated to the sun was chosen from its size. It was followed by ten chariots, embossed with gold and silver, and by the cavalry of twelve nations, dressed in their various costumes, and carrying their peculiar arms. Then came the Persian immortals, ten thousand in number, adorned with golden chains, and wearing robes embroidered with gold, and long-sleeved tunics, all glittering with precious stones. At a short interval fifteen thousand nobles, who bore the honourable title of relations of the king, walked in garments which, in magnificence and luxury, more[464] resembled those of women than of men. The doryphori (a chosen company of spearmen) preceded the chariot in which the king himself sat, high above the surrounding multitude. On either side of this chariot were effigies of the gods in gold and silver. The yoke was inlaid with the rarest jewels. From it projected two golden figures of Ninus and Belus, each a cubit in length. A golden eagle with outspread wings was placed between them. The king was distinguished, from all those who surrounded him, by the magnificence of his robes, and by the cidaris, or mitre, upon his head. By his side walked two hundred of the most noble of his relations. Ten thousand warriors, bearing spears whose staffs were of silver and heads of gold, followed the royal chariot. The king’s led horses, forty in number, and thirty thousand footmen, concluded the procession. At the distance of one stadium followed the mother and wife of the king, in chariots. A crowd of women, the handmaidens and ladies of the queens, accompanied them on horseback. Fifteen cars, called armamaxæ, carried the children of the king, their tutors and nurses, and the eunuchs. The king’s three hundred and sixty concubines, who accompanied him, were adorned with royal splendour. Six hundred mules and three hundred camels bore the royal treasury, guarded by the archers. The friends and relations of the ladies were mingled with a crowd of cooks and servants of all kinds. The procession was closed by the light-armed troops.

The armies were provided with the engines and materials necessary for the siege of the cities they might meet with in their expedition. If any natural obstructions impeded the approach to a castle, such as a forest or a[465] river, they were, if possible, removed. Rivers were turned out of their courses, if they impeded the operations of the army; and warriors are frequently represented in the sculptures cutting down trees which surround a hostile city.

The first step in a siege was probably to advance the battering-ram. If the castle was built, as in the plains of Assyria and Babylonia, upon an artificial eminence, an inclined plane, reaching to the summit of the mound, was formed of earth, stones, or trees, and the besiegers were then able to bring their engines to the foot of the walls. This road was not unfrequently covered with bricks, forming a kind of paved way, up which the ponderous machines could be drawn without much difficulty.

This mode of reaching the walls of a city is frequently alluded to by the prophets, and is described by Isaiah: “Thus saith the Lord, concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it.” Similar approaches were used by the Egyptians. They not only enabled the besiegers to push their battering-rams up to the castle, but at the same time to escalade the walls, the summit of which might otherwise have been beyond the reach of their ladders.

The battering-rams were of several kinds. Some were joined to movable towers which held warriors and armed men. The whole then formed one great temporary building, the top of which is represented in the sculptures, as on a level with the walls, and even turrets, of the besieged city. In some bas-reliefs the battering-ram is without wheels; it was then perhaps constructed on the spot, and was not intended to be moved. The movable tower was probably sometimes unprovided with the ram; but I have not met with it so represented in the sculptures. When Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, besieged Jerusalem, he “built forts against it round about.” These forts or towers, if stationary, were solidly constructed of wood; if movable, they consisted of a light frame covered with wickerwork. The Jews were forbidden to cut down and employ, for this purpose, trees which afford sustenance to man. “Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down: and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee until it be subdued.”

When the machine containing the battering-ram consisted of a simple framework, not forming an artificial tower, a cloth of some kind of drapery edged with fringes and otherwise ornamented appears to have been occasionally thrown over it. Sometimes it may have been covered with hides. It moved either on four or on six wheels, and was provided with one ram or with two. The mode of working the rams cannot be determined from the Assyrian sculptures. It may be presumed, from the representations in the bas-reliefs, that they were partly suspended by a rope fastened to the outside of the machine, and that men directed and impelled them from within. Such was the plan adopted by the Egyptians, in whose paintings the warriors, working the ram, may be seen through the frame. Sometimes this engine was ornamented by a carved or painted figure of the presiding divinity, kneeling on one knee and drawing a bow. The artificial tower was usually occupied by two warriors: one discharged his arrows against the besieged, whom he was able from his lofty position to harass more effectually than if he had been below; the other held up a shield for his companion’s defence. Warriors are not unfrequently represented as stepping from the machine to the battlements.

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Ezekiel alludes to all these modes of attack. “Lay siege against it,” he exclaims, speaking of the city of Jerusalem, “and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering-rams against it round about.”

Archers on the walls hurled stones from slings, and discharged their arrows against the warriors in the artificial towers; whilst the rest of the besieged were no less active in endeavouring to frustrate the attempts of the assailants to make breaches in their walls. By dropping a doubled chain or rope from the battlements, they caught the ram, and could either destroy its efficacy altogether or break the force of its blows. Those below, however, by placing hooks over the engine, and throwing their whole weight upon them, struggled to retain it in its place.

The besieged, if unable to displace the battering-ram, sought to destroy it by fire and threw lighted torches or firebrands upon it. But water was poured upon the flames, through pipes attached to the artificial tower. Other engines and instruments of war were employed by the besiegers. With a kind of catapult, apparently consisting of a light wooden frame covered with canvas or hides, they threw large stones and darts against the besieged, who, in their turn, endeavoured to set fire to it by torches. A long staff with an iron head, resembling a spear, was used to force stones out of the walls. Mines were also opened, and the assailants sought to enter the castle through concealed passages. Those who worked on them, or advanced to the attack, were perhaps protected by the testudo, as represented in the Egyptian paintings; but this defence is not seen in the Assyrian sculptures. Attempts were made to set fire to the gates of the city by placing torches against them, or to break them open with axes.

Mounting to the assault by ladders was constantly practised, and appears to have been the most general mode of attacking a castle; for ladders are found on those bas-reliefs in which neither the battering-ram nor other engines are introduced. It is remarkable that the battering-ram is not introduced in the sculptures hitherto discovered at Kuyunjik, nor, as far as I am aware, in those of Khorsabad. It would appear, therefore, that at the period of the building of those edifices it had fallen into disuse. Scaling-ladders appear in Egyptian sculptures as early as the XIXth Dynasty. Ramses III is seen taking a city, by their means, at Medinet Habu. They reached to the top of the battlements, and several persons could ascend them at the same time. Whilst warriors, armed with the sword and spear, scaled the walls, archers posted at the foot of the ladders kept the enemy in check and drove them from the walls.

[467]

The troops of the besieging army were ranged in ranks below. The king was frequently present during the attack. Descending from his chariot, which remained stationary at a short distance behind him, he discharged his arrows against the enemy. He was attended by his shield bearer and eunuchs, one of whom generally held over him the emblem of royalty, the umbrella, whilst the others bore his arms. He is sometimes represented in his chariots, superintending the operations, or repulsing a sally. Warriors of high rank likewise came in chariots, accompanied by their shield bearers and charioteers. The vizier and the chief of the eunuchs are frequently seen in the midst of the combatants.

The besieging warriors were protected, as I have already mentioned, by large shields of wickerwork, sometimes covered with hides, which concealed the entire person. Three men frequently formed a group; one held the shield, a second drew the bow, and a third stood ready with a sword to defend the archer and shield bearer, in case the enemy should sally from the castle. The besieged manned the battlements with archers and slingers, who discharged their missiles against the assailants. Large stones and hot water were also thrown upon those below. A woman from the battlement of Thebez cast a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and broke his skull (Judges ix. 53).

When the battering-ram had made a breach, and the assault had commenced, the women appeared upon the walls; and, tearing their hair or stretching out their hands, implored mercy. The men are not unfrequently represented as joining in asking for quarter. When the assailants were once masters of the place, an indiscriminate slaughter appears to have succeeded, and the city was generally given over to the flames. In the bas-reliefs warriors are seen decapitating the conquered and plunging swords or daggers into their hearts, holding them by the hair of their heads. The prisoners were either impaled and subjected to horrible torments or carried away as slaves. The manner of impaling, adopted by the Assyrians, appears to have differed from that still in use in the East. A stake was driven into the body immediately under the ribs. When Darius took Babylon he impaled three thousand prisoners (Herod, iii. 159). In a bas-relief discovered at Khorsabad, a man was represented flaying a prisoner with a semicircular knife. The Scythians scalped and flayed their enemies, and used their skins as horse-trappings (Herod, iv. 64).

The women, children, and cattle were led away by the conquerors; and that it was frequently the custom of the Assyrians to remove the whole population of the conquered country to some distant part of their dominions, and to replace it by colonies of their own, we learn from the treatment of the people of Samaria. Eunuchs and scribes were appointed to take an inventory of the spoil. They appear to have stood near the gates, and wrote down with a pen, probably upon rolls of leather, the number of prisoners, sheep, and oxen, and the amount of the booty, which issued from the city. The women were sometimes taken away in bullock carts, and are usually seen in the bas-reliefs bearing a part of their property with them—either a vase or a sack perhaps filled with household stuff. They were sometimes accompanied by their children, and are generally represented as tearing their hair, throwing dust upon their heads, and bewailing their lot.

After the city had been taken, a throne for the king appears to have been placed in some conspicuous spot within the walls. He is represented in the sculptures as sitting upon it, attended by his eunuchs and principal officers, and receiving the prisoners brought bound into his presence. The chiefs[468] prostrate themselves before him, whilst he places his foot upon their necks, as Joshua commanded the captains of Israel to put their feet upon the necks of the captive kings. This custom long prevailed in the East. In the rock sculpture of Behistun, Darius is seen with his foot upon the neck of Gometes, the rebellious Magian, who declared himself to be Bardius, the son of Cyrus. When inferior prisoners were captured, their hands were tied behind, or their arms and feet were bound by iron manacles.

They were urged onward by blows from the spears or swords of the warriors to whom they were entrusted. In a bas-relief from Khorsabad, captives are led before the king by a rope fastened to rings passed through the lip and nose. This sculpture illustrates the passage in 2 Kings xix. 28: “I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips.” The king is represented in the bas-relief as holding a rope fastened to a ring, which passes through the lips of a prisoner, one of whose eyes he appears to be piercing with his spear.

In the sculptures of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, captives are seen bringing small models of their cities to the victorious king, as a token of their subjection. Similar models are borne in triumphal processions.

The heads of the slain were generally collected, and brought either to the king or to an officer appointed to take account of their number. When Ahab’s seventy sons were killed, their heads were cut off, and brought in baskets to Jezreel. They were afterwards, laid “in two heaps at the entering in of the gate” (2 Kings x. 8). The Egyptians generally counted by hands. This mode of reckoning the loss of the enemy was long resorted to in the East.

As soon as the soldiers entered the captured city, they began to plunder, and then hurried away with the spoil. They led off the horses, carried forth on their shoulders furniture and vessels of gold, silver, and other metals, and made prisoners of the inhabitants, who, probably, became the property of those who seized them. The Assyrian warriors are seen in the sculptures bearing away in triumph the idols of the conquered nations, or breaking them into pieces, weighing them in scales, and dividing the fragments. Thus Hosea prophesied that the calf, the idol of Samaria, should be carried away by the Assyrians.

When the city had been sacked it was usually given up to the flames and utterly destroyed. The surrounding country was also laid waste. If it had been a capital—a place of strength and renown—it was seldom rebuilt on the same spot, which was avoided as unfortunate by those who survived the catastrophe and returned to the ruins.

ASSYRIAN WAR COSTUMES AND WAR METHODS

The costume of the warriors differed according to their rank and the nature of the service they had to perform. Those who fought in chariots, and held the shield for the defence of the king, are generally seen in coats of scale armour, which descend either to the knees or to the ankles. A large number of the scales were discovered in the earliest palace of Nimrud. They were generally of iron, slightly embossed or raised in the centre, and some were inlaid with copper. They were probably fastened to a shirt of felt or coarse linen. Such is the armour always represented in the most ancient sculptures. At a later period other kinds were used; the scales were larger, and appear to have been fastened to bands of iron or copper. The armour was frequently embossed with groups of figures and fanciful[469] ornaments; but there is no reason to believe that the rich designs on the breasts of the kings were on metal.

The warriors were frequently dressed in an embroidered tunic, which was probably made of felt or leather, sufficiently thick to resist the weapons then in use. On the sculptures of Kuyunjik they are generally seen in this attire. Their arms were bare from above the elbow, and their legs from the knees downward, except when they wore shirts of mail which descended to the ankles. They had sandals on their feet. The warriors on the later Assyrian monuments, particularly on those of Khorsabad, are distinguished by a peculiar ornament, somewhat resembling the Highland phillibeg. It appears to be fastened to the girdle, and falls below the short tunic.

In the sculptures of Kuyunjik and of monuments of the same period, the dress of the soldiers appears to vary, according to the manner in which they are armed. Those with spear and shield wear pointed or crested helmets, and plain or embroidered tunics, confined at the waist by a broad girdle. A kind of cross belt passes over the shoulders, and is ornamented in the centre of the breast by a circular disk, probably of metal. The slingers are attired in the embroidered tunic, which I conjecture to be of felt or leather; and wear a pointed helmet, with metal lappets falling over the ears. Both the spearmen and slingers have greaves, which appear to have been laced in front.

The archers are dressed in very short embroidered tunics, which scarcely cover half the thigh, the rest of the leg being left completely bare. They are chiefly distinguished from other warriors by the absence of the helmet. A simple band round the temples confines the hair, which is drawn up in a bunch behind.

It is probable that these various costumes indicate people of different countries, auxiliaries in the Assyrian armies, who used the weapons most familiar to them, and formed different corps or divisions. Thus, in the army of Xerxes were marshalled men of many nations, each armed according to the fashion of his country, and fighting in his own peculiar way. We may, perhaps, identify, in the Assyrian sculptures, several of the costumes described by the Greek historian as worn by those who formed the vast army of the Persian king.

The arms of the early Assyrians were the spear, the bow, the sword, and the dagger. The sling is not represented in the most ancient monuments as an Assyrian weapon, although used by a conquered nation; it was, perhaps,[470] introduced at a later period. The bows were of two kinds: one long and slightly curved, the other short and almost angular; the two appear to have been carried at the same time by those who fought in chariots.

The arrows were probably made of reeds, and were kept in a quiver slung over the back. The king, however, and the great officers of the state were followed by attendants, who carried the quivers and supplied their masters with arrows. The bow was drawn to the cheek or to the ear, as by the Saxons, and not to the breast, after the fashion of the Greeks. The barbs were of iron and copper, several of both materials having been found in the ruins. When in battle it was customary for the archer to hold two arrows in reserve in his right hand; they were placed between the fingers, and did not interfere with the motion of the arm whilst drawing the bow. When marching he usually carried the larger bow over his shoulders, having first passed his head through it. The bow of the king was borne by an attendant. The smaller bows were frequently placed in the quiver, particularly by those who fought in chariots. A leather or linen guard was fastened by straps to the inside of the left arm to protect it when the arrow was discharged. The swords were worn on the left side, and suspended by belts passing over the shoulders or round the middle; some were short and others long. I have already alluded to the beauty of the ornaments on the hilt and sheath.

The dagger appears to have been carried by all, both in time of peace and war; even the priests and divinities are represented with them. They were worn indifferently on the left and right side, or perhaps on both at the same time. Generally two, or sometimes three, were inserted into one sheath, which was passed through the girdle. The handles, as I have already mentioned, were most elaborately adorned, and were frequently in the shape of the head of a ram, bull, or horse, being made of ivory or rare stones. A small chain was sometimes fastened to the hilt or to the sheath, probably to retain it in its place. A dagger, resembling in form those of the sculptures, was found amongst the ruins of Nimrud; it is of copper. The handle is hollowed, either to receive precious stones, ivory, or enamel.

The spear of the Assyrian footman was short, scarcely exceeding the height of a man; that of the horseman appears to have been considerably longer. The iron head of a spear from Nimrud is in the British Museum. The shaft was probably of some strong wood, and did not consist of a reed, like that of the modern Arab lance. The large club pointed with iron, mentioned by Herodotus amongst the weapons carried by the Assyrians, is not represented in the sculptures; unless, indeed, the description of the historian applies to the mace, a weapon in very general use amongst them, and frequently seen in the bas-reliefs. This weapon consisted of a short handle, probably of wood, to which was fixed a head, evidently of metal, in the shape of a flower, rosette, lion, or bull. To the end of the handle was attached a thong, apparently of leather, through which the hand was passed. I have not found any representation of warriors using the hatchet, except when cutting down trees, to clear the country preparatory to a siege. It is, however, generally seen amongst the weapons of those who fought in chariots, and was carried in the quiver, with the arrows and short angular bow.

In the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik, slingers are frequently represented amongst the Assyrian troops. The sling appears to have consisted of a double rope, with a thong, probably of leather, to receive the stone; it was swung round the head. The slinger held a second stone in his left hand, and at his feet is generally seen a heap of pebbles ready for use. That the Persian slingers were exceedingly expert, used very large stones, and could annoy their enemies[471] whilst out of the reach of their darts or arrows, we learn from several passages in Xenophon.

The javelin is frequently included amongst the weapons of the Assyrian charioteers; but the warriors are not represented as using it in battle. It was carried in the quiver amongst the arrows.

The shields of the Assyrians were of various forms and materials. In the more ancient bas-reliefs a circular buckler, either of hide or metal, perhaps in some instances of gold and silver, is most frequently introduced. King Solomon made three hundred shields of beaten gold, three pounds of gold to each shield (1 Kings x. 17). The servants of Hadad-ezer, king of Zobah, carried shields of gold (2 Samuel viii. 7). The shield of Goliath was of brass. It was held by a handle fixed to the centre. Light oblong shields of wickerwork, carried in a similar manner, are also found in the early sculptures; but those of a circular form appear to have been generally used by the charioteers.

Suspended to the backs of the chariots, and also carried by warriors, are frequently seen shields in the shape of a crescent, narrow and curved outwards at the extremities. The face is ornamented by a row of angular bosses, or teeth, in the centre of which is the head of a lion. In the sculptures of Khorsabad the round shield is often highly ornamented. It resembles, both in shape and in the devices upon it, the bucklers now carried by the Kurds and Arabs, which are made of the hide of the hippopotamus. In the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik some warriors bear oval shields, very convex, and sufficiently large to cover the greater part of the body. The centre and outer rim are decorated with bosses.

The shield used during a siege concealed the whole person of the warrior, and completely defended him from the arrows of the enemy. It was made either of wickerwork or of hides, and was furnished at the top with a curved point, or with a square projection, like a roof, at right angles to the body of the shield, which may have served to defend the heads of the combatants against missiles discharged from the walls and towers. Such were probably the shields used by the Persian archers at the battle of Platæa. The archers, whether fighting on foot or in chariots, were accompanied by shield bearers, whose office it was to protect them from the shafts of the enemy. Sometimes one shield covered two archers. The shield bearer was usually provided with a sword, which he held ready drawn for defence. The king was always attended in his wars by this officer, and even in peace one of his eunuchs usually carried a circular shield for his use. This shield bearer was probably a person of rank, as in Egypt. On some monuments of the later Assyrian period he is represented carrying two shields, one in each hand.

A great part of the strength of the Assyrian armies consisted in chariots and horsemen, to which we have frequent allusion in the inspired writings. The chariots appear to have been used by the king and the highest officers of state, who are never seen in battle on horseback nor, except in sieges, on foot. They contained either two or three persons. The king was always accompanied by two attendants—the warrior protecting him with a shield (who was replaced during peace by the eunuch bearing the parasol), and the charioteer. The principal warriors were also frequently attended by their shield bearers, though more generally by the driver alone.

The chariot was used during a siege, as well as in open battle. The king and his warriors are frequently represented as fighting in chariots with the enemy beneath the walls of a castle, or as having dismounted from their cars, to discharge their arrows against the besieged. In the latter case,[472] grooms on foot hold the horses. When the king in his chariot formed part of a triumphal procession, armed men led the horses. The chariot was also preceded and followed by men on foot.

The horsemen formed a no less important part of the Assyrian army than the charioteers.—“Assyrians clothed in blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses” (Ezekiel xxiii. 6). Horsemen are seen in the most ancient sculptures of Nimrud. It is singular, as observes Sir Gardner Wilkinson (Ancient Egyptians, Vol. I, p. 288), that horsemen are nowhere represented on the monuments of Egypt, although there can be no doubt, from numerous passages in the sacred writings, that cavalry formed an important part of the Egyptian armies. I have already mentioned that disciplined bodies of cavalry were represented in the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik. We learn from the Book of Judith that Holofernes had twelve thousand archers on horseback (Judith ii. 15). Solomon had twelve thousand horsemen (1 Kings x. 26). The king himself is never represented on horseback, although a horse richly caparisoned, apparently for his use,—perhaps to enable him to fly, should his chariot horses be killed,—is frequently seen led by a warrior, and following his chariot.

In the earliest sculptures the horses, except such as are led behind the king’s chariot, are unprovided with cloths or saddles. The rider is seated on the naked back of the animal. At a later period, however, a kind of pad appears to have been introduced; and in a sculpture at Kuyunjik was represented a high saddle not unlike that now in use in the East.b

THE ARTS OF PEACE IN BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA

Nothing else, perhaps, is so vitally important in the life-history of a nation as its contact with other nations. Such contact alone, it would seem, can enable a nation in some measure to ward off the lethargy of age, or to overcome the incubus of custom and superstition.

The isolated nation does not get beyond a certain stage of evolution. It learns a few secrets, and seems powerless to learn others of itself. Only through contact with another community can it improve its customs, get new ideas, acquire better habits of thought and action. We have already pointed out how Egypt profited in this regard through the foreign associations that came with the inroad of conquering tribes from the south and east.

Babylon, however, occupied a far more favourable position than Egypt for contact with other nations, not alone through such warlike channels, but also through the yet more beneficent channels of peaceful commerce. A glance at the map shows that Mesopotamia occupies the very centre of the world of ancient civilisation. By reaching out its hand, so to speak, this way or that, it came in contact with every civilised nation of the period except China. It was the connecting link between Persia and India on the one hand, and Lydia, Syria, and Egypt on the other. Even Chinese ideas were to some extent accessible through the mediation of India. No other great nation of antiquity compares with Babylonia in this regard; and perhaps this was the most important reason why this little strip of fertile land between the two great rivers supported a continuous civilisation, on the whole ever advancing, millennium after millennium.

If one would correctly understand the development of that Mesopotamian civilisation, of which our own culture is the direct outgrowth, one must give[473] heed to the commercial relations which were so important a factor of national growth, without which, indeed, no such civilisation as that of Babylon and Nineveh could have come into existence.

But, of course, commerce builds up local industries. A nation must be a producer of useful commodities before it can hope to secure, by peaceful means, the commodities produced by other nations. In connection with the commercial relations of a nation we must study also its home industries, that is to say, broadly speaking, its agricultural and manufacturing conditions. We must see something also of the social customs that grow out of, and rest upon these industrial conditions; and of the laws that are the official expression of the communal intelligence—the index of the communal conscience of the epoch.a And first we have the privilege of quoting from one who himself saw Babylon, that is, of course, Herodotus.

BABYLON AND ITS CUSTOMS DESCRIBED BY AN EYE-WITNESS

The Assyrians are masters of many capital towns; but their place of greatest strength and fame is Babylon, which, after the destruction of Nineveh, was the royal residence. It is situated on a large plain, and is a perfect square; each side, by every approach, is 120 furlongs in length; the space, therefore, occupied by the whole is 480 furlongs. [The different reports of the extent of the walls of Babylon are given as follows: By Herodotus at 120 stadia each side, or 480 in circumference. By Pliny and Solinus at 60 Roman miles, which, at eight stadia to a mile, agrees with Herodotus. By Strabo at 385 stadia. By Diodorus, from Ctesias, 360; but from Clitarchus, who accompanied Alexander, 365; and, lastly, by Curtius, 368. It appears highly probable that 360 or 365 was the true statement of the circumference.]

So extensive is the ground which Babylon occupies, its internal beauty and magnificence exceeds whatever has come within my knowledge. It is surrounded by a trench, very wide, deep, and full of water; the wall beyond this is two hundred royal cubits high, and fifty wide; the royal exceeds the common cubit by three digits. [These measures, being taken from the proportions of the human body, are more permanent than any other. The foot of a moderate-sized man and the cubit, that is the space from the end of the fingers to the elbow, have always been near twelve and eighteen inches respectively.—Beloe.]

I here think it right to describe the use to which the earth dug out of the trench was converted, as well as the particular manner in which they constructed the wall. The earth of the trench was first of all laid in heaps, and, when a sufficient quantity was obtained, made into square bricks and baked in a furnace. They used as cement a composition of heated bitumen, which, mixed with tops of reeds, was placed betwixt every thirtieth course of bricks. Having thus lined the sides of the trench, they proceeded to build the wall in the same manner, on the summit of which, and fronting each other, they erected small watch-towers of one story, leaving a space betwixt them, through which a chariot and four horses might pass and turn. In the circumference of the wall, at different distances, were an hundred massy gates of brass, whose hinges and frames were of the same metal. Within an eight days’ journey from Babylon is a city called Is [Hit], near which flows a river of the same name, which empties itself into the Euphrates. With the current of this river, particles of bitumen descend towards Babylon, by the means of which its walls were constructed. The[474] great river Euphrates, which, with its deep and rapid streams, rises in the Armenian Mountains, and pours itself into the Red Sea, divides Babylon into two parts. The walls meet and form an angle with the river at each extremity of the town, where a breastwork of burnt bricks begins, and is continued along each bank. The city, which abounds in houses from three to four stories in height, is regularly divided into streets. Through these, which are parallel, there are transverse avenues to the river, opened through the wall and breastwork, and secured by an equal number of little gates of brass.

The first wall is regularly fortified; the interior one, though less in substance, is of almost equal strength. Besides these, in the centre of each division of the city, there is a circular space surrounded by a wall. In one of these stands the royal palace, which fills a large and strongly defended space. The temple of Jupiter Belus occupies the other, whose huge gates of brass may still be seen. It is a square building, each side of which is of the length of two furlongs. In the midst a tower rises, of the solid depth and height of one furlong, upon which, resting as a base, seven other turrets are built in regular succession. The ascent is on the outside, which, winding from the ground, is continued to the highest tower; and in the middle of the whole structure there is a convenient resting-place. In the last tower is a large chapel, in which is placed a couch magnificently adorned, and near it a table of solid gold; but there is no statue in the place. No man is suffered to sleep here; but the apartment is occupied by a female, who, as the Chaldean priests affirm, is selected by their deity from the whole nation as the object of his pleasures.

They themselves have a tradition, which cannot easily obtain credit, that their deity enters this temple and reposes by night on this couch. A similar assertion is also made by the Egyptians of Thebes; for, in the interior part of the temple of the Theban Jupiter, a woman in like manner sleeps. Of these two women, it is presumed that neither of them has any communication with the other sex. In which predicament the priestess of the temple of Pataræ in Lycia is also placed. Here is no regular oracle; but whenever a divine communication is expected, the priestess is obliged to pass the preceding night in the temple.

In this temple there is also a small chapel, lower in the building, which contains a figure of Jupiter in a sitting posture, with a large table before him; these, with the base of the table and the seat of the throne, are all of the purest gold, and are estimated by the Chaldeans to be worth eight hundred talents. On the outside of this chapel there are two altars: one is of gold, the other is of immense size, and appropriated to the sacrifice of full-grown animals; those only which have not left their dams may be offered on the altar of gold. Upon the larger altar, at the time of the anniversary festival in honour of their god, the Chaldeans regularly consume incense, to the amount of a thousand talents. There was formerly in this temple a statue of gold, twelve cubits high; this, however, I mention from the information of the Chaldeans, and not from my own knowledge. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, endeavoured by sinister means to get possession of this, not daring openly to take it; but his son Xerxes afterwards seized it, putting the priest to death who endeavoured to prevent its removal. The temple, besides those ornaments which I have described, contains many offerings of individuals.

Among the various sovereigns of Babylon, who contributed to the strength of its walls, and the decoration of its temples, and of whom I shall make[475] mention when I treat of the Assyrians, there were two females; the former of these was named Semiramis, who preceded the other by an interval of five generations. This queen raised certain mounds, which are indeed admirable works. Till then the whole plain was subject to violent inundations from the river. The other queen was called Nitocris. She being a woman of superior understanding, not only left many permanent works, which I shall hereafter describe, but also having observed the increasing power and restless spirit of the Medes, and that Nineveh, with other cities, had fallen a prey to their ambition, put her dominions in the strongest posture of defence. To effect this she sunk a number of canals above Babylon, which by their disposition rendered the Euphrates, which before flowed to the sea in an almost even line, so complicated by its windings that in its passage to Babylon it arrives three times at Ardericca, an Assyrian village; and to this hour they who wish to go from the sea up the Euphrates to Babylon are compelled to touch at Ardericca three times on three different days. The banks also, which she raised to restrain the river on each side, are really wonderful from their enormous height and substance. At a considerable distance above Babylon, turning aside a little from the stream, she ordered an immense lake to be dug, sinking it till they came to the water. Its circumference was no less than four hundred and twenty furlongs. The earth of this was applied to the embankments of the river, and the sides of the trench or lake were strengthened and lined with stones brought thither for that purpose. She had in view by these works, first of all to break the violence of the current by the number of circumflexions and also to render the navigation to Babylon as difficult and tedious as possible. These things were done in that part of her dominions which was most accessible to the Medes, and with the further view of keeping them in ignorance of her affairs by giving them no commercial encouragement. Having rendered both of these works strong and secure, she proceeded to execute the following project. The city being divided by the river into two distinct parts, whoever wanted to go from one side to the other was obliged in the time of the former kings to pass the water in a boat. For this, which was a matter of general inconvenience, she provided this remedy, and the immense lake which she had before sunk became the further means of extending her fame. Having procured a number of large stones, she changed the course of the river, directing it into the canal prepared for its reception. When this was full the natural bed of the river became dry, and the embankments on each side, near those smaller gates which led to the water, were lined with bricks hardened by fire, similar to those which had been used in the construction of the wall. She afterwards, nearly in the centre of the city, with the stones above-mentioned, strongly compacted with iron and with lead, erected a bridge. Over this the inhabitants passed in the daytime by a square platform, which was removed in the evening to prevent acts of mutual depredation. When the above canal was thoroughly filled with water, and the bridge completely finished and adorned, the Euphrates was suffered to return to its original bed; thus both the canal and the bridge were confessedly of the greatest utility to the public. The above queen was also celebrated for another instance of ingenuity. She caused her tomb to be erected over one of the principal gates of the city, and so situated as to be obvious to universal inspection. It was thus inscribed: “If any of the sovereigns, my successors, shall be in extreme want of money let him open my tomb and take what money he may think proper; if his necessity be not great, let him forbear; the experiment will perhaps be dangerous.” The tomb remained[476] without injury till the time and reign of Darius. He was equally offended at the gate’s being rendered useless, and that the invitation thus held out to become affluent should have been so long neglected. The gate, it is to be observed, was of no use, from the general aversion to pass through a place over which a dead body was laid. Darius opened the tomb; but instead of finding riches, he saw only a dead body, with a label of this import: “If your avarice had not been equally base and insatiable, you would not have disturbed the repose of the dead.” Such are the traditions concerning this queen.

The following exists amongst many other proofs which I shall hereafter produce of the power and greatness of Babylon. Independent of those subsidies which are paid monthly to the Persian monarch, the whole of his dominions are obliged throughout the year to provide subsistence for him and for his army. Babylon alone raises a supply for four months, eight being proportioned to all the rest of Asia, so that the resources of this region are considered as adequate to a third part of Asia. The government also of this country, which the Persians call a satrapy, is deemed by much the noblest in the empire. When Tritantæchmes, son of Artabazus, was appointed to this principality by the king, he received every day an artaby of silver. The artaby is a Persian measure which exceeds the Attic medimnus by about three chænices. Besides his horses for military service this province maintained for the sovereign’s use a stud of eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares, one horse being allotted to twenty mares. He had, moreover, so immense a number of Indian dogs that four great towns in the vicinity of Babylon were exempted from every other tax but that of maintaining them.

The Assyrians have but little rain; the lands, however, are fertilised and the fruits of the earth nourished by means of the river. This does not, like the Egyptian Nile, enrich the country by overflowing its banks, but is dispersed by manual labour or by hydraulic engines. The Babylonian district, like Egypt, is intersected by a number of canals, the largest of which, continued with a southeast course from the Euphrates to that part of the Tigris where Nineveh stands, is capable of receiving vessels of burden. Of all countries which have come within my observation this is far the most fruitful in corn. Fruit trees, such as the vine, the olive, and the fig, they do not even attempt to cultivate; but the soil is so particularly well adapted for corn, that it never produces less than two hundredfold. In seasons which are remarkably favourable it will sometimes rise to three hundred. The ear of their wheat as well as barley is four digits in size. The immense height to which millet and sesamum will grow, although I have witnessed it myself, I know not how to mention. I am well aware that they who have not visited this country will deem whatever I may say on this subject a violation of probability. They have no oil but what they extract from the sesamum. The palm is a very common plant in this country and generally fruitful. This they cultivate like fig trees, and it produces them bread, wine, and honey. The process observed is this: they fasten the fruit of that which the Greeks term the male tree to the one which produces the date; by this means the worm which is contained in the former entering the fruit ripens and prevents it from dropping immaturely. The male palms bear insects in their fruit in the same manner as the wild fig trees. Of all that I saw in this country, next to Babylon itself, what to me appeared the greatest curiosity were the boats. These which are used by those who come to the city are of a circular form and made of skins. They are constructed in[477] Armenia, in the parts above Assyria, where the sides of the vessels being formed of willow are covered externally with skins, and having no distinction of head or stern, are modelled in the shape of a shield. Lining the bottom of the boats with reeds, they take on board their merchandise, and thus commit themselves to the stream. The principal article of their commerce is palm wine, which they carry in casks. The boats have two oars, one man to each; one pulls to him, the other pushes from him. These boats are of very different dimensions; some of them are so large as to bear freights to the value of five thousand talents; the smaller of them has one ass on board, the larger several. On their arrival at Babylon they dispose of all their cargo, selling the ribs of their boats, the matting, and everything but the skins which cover them; these they lay upon their asses and with them return to Armenia. The rapidity of the stream is too great to render their return by water practicable. This is perhaps the reason which induces them to make their boats of skin rather than of wood. On their return with their asses to Armenia they make other vessels in the manner we have before described.

Their clothing is of this kind: they have two vests, one of linen which falls to the feet, another over this which is made of wool, a white sash connects the whole. The fashion of their shoes is peculiar to themselves, though somewhat resembling those worn by the Thebans. They wear their hair long, and covered with a turban, and are lavish in their use of perfumes. Each person has a seal ring, and a cane, or walking-stick, upon the top of which is carved an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle, or some figure or other, for to have a stick without a device is unlawful.

In my description of their laws I have to mention one, the wisdom of which I must admire, and which, if I am not misinformed, the Eneti, who are of Illyrian origin, use also. In each of their several districts this custom was every year observed: such of their virgins as were marriageable were, at an appointed time and place, assembled together. Here the men also came, and some public officer sold by auction the young women one by one, beginning with the most beautiful. When she was disposed of, and, as may be supposed, for a considerable sum, he proceeded to sell the one who was next in beauty, taking it for granted that each man married the maid he purchased. [Herodotus here omits one circumstance of consequence, in my opinion, to prove that this ceremony was conducted with decency. It passed under the inspection of the magistrates, and the tribunal superintended the marriage of the young women. Three men, respectable for their virtue, and who were at the head of their several tribes, conducted the young women that were marriageable to the place of assembly, and there sold them by the voice of the public crier.—Larcher. If the custom of disposing of the young women to the best bidder was peculiar to the Babylonians, that of purchasing the person intended for a wife, and of giving the father a sum to obtain her, was much more general. It was practised amongst the Greeks, the Trojans and their allies, and even amongst the deities.—Bellanger.]

The more affluent of the Babylonian youths contended with much ardour and emulation to obtain the most beautiful; those of the common people who were desirous of marrying, as if they had but little occasion for personal accomplishments, were content to receive the more homely maidens, with a portion annexed to them. For the crier, when he had sold the fairest, selected next the most ugly, or one that was deformed; she also was put up to sale, and assigned to whoever would take her with the least money. This money was what the sale of the beautiful maidens produced, who were thus obliged[478] to portion out those who were deformed, or less lovely than themselves. No man was permitted to provide a match for his daughter, nor could any one take away the woman whom he purchased without first giving security to make her his wife. To this, if he did not assent, his money was returned to him. There were no restrictions with respect to residence; those of another village might also become purchasers. This, although the most wise of all their institutions, has not been preserved to our time. One of their later ordinances was made to punish violence offered to women, and to prevent their being carried away to other parts; for after the city had been taken, and the inhabitants plundered, the lower people were reduced to such extremities that they prostituted their daughters for hire.

They have also another institution, the good tendency of which claims applause. Such as are diseased among them they carry into some public square; they have no professors of medicine, but the passengers in general interrogate the sick person concerning his malady, that if any person has either been afflicted with a similar disease himself, or seen its operation on another, he may communicate the process by which his own recovery was effected, or by which, in any other instance, he knew the disease to be removed. No one may pass by the afflicted person in silence, or without inquiry into the nature of his complaint.

Previous to their interment, their dead are anointed with honey, and, like the Egyptians, they are fond of funeral lamentations. Whenever a man has had communication with his wife, he sits over a consecrated vessel, containing burning perfumes; the woman does the same. In the morning both of them go into the bath; till they have done this they will neither of them touch any domestic utensil. This custom is also observed in Arabia.

The Babylonians have one custom in the highest degree abominable. Every woman who is a native of the country is obliged once in her life to attend at the temple of Venus, and prostitute herself to a stranger. Such women as are of superior rank do not omit even this opportunity of separating themselves from their inferiors; these go to the temple in splendid chariots, accompanied by a numerous train of domestics, and place themselves near the entrance. This is the practice with many, whilst the greater part, crowned with garlands, seat themselves in the vestibule, and there are always numbers coming and going. The seats have all of them a rope or string annexed to them, by which the stranger may determine his choice. A woman, having once taken this situation, is not allowed to return home till some stranger throws her a piece of money, and leading her to a distance from the temple, enjoys her person. It is usual for the man, when he gives the money, to say, “May the goddess Mylitta be auspicious to thee!” Mylitta being the Assyrian name of Venus. The money given is applied to sacred uses, and must not be refused, however small it may be. The woman is not suffered to make any distinction, but is obliged to accompany whoever offers her money. She afterwards makes some conciliatory oblation to the goddess, and returns to her house, never afterwards to be obtained on similar or on any terms. Such as are eminent for their elegance and beauty do not continue long, but those who are of less engaging appearance have sometimes been known to remain from three to four years unable to accomplish the terms of the law. It is to be remarked that the inhabitants of Cyprus have a similar observance.

In addition to the foregoing account of Babylonian manners, we may observe that there are three tribes of this people whose only food is fish. They prepare it thus: having dried it in the sun, they beat it very small in[479] a mortar, and afterwards sift it through a piece of fine cloth; they then form it into cakes, or bake it as bread.c

The foregoing description by Herodotus refers to the condition of Babylon in the early part of the fifth century B.C., something like fifty years after the overthrow of the new Babylonian empire by Cyrus. The city still remained under Persian influence, Babylon being one of the capitals of the “Great King.” The account given has a peculiar value because it is the only description given by an eye-witness from the Western world that has come down to us from so early a period.

Herodotus saw with the eyes of a Greek of the age of Pericles, and it is now admitted that when he describes his personal experiences, he is altogether dependable. His account, therefore, still has full value as supplementing the records of the monuments. It is greatly to be regretted that the Greek historian remained ignorant of the monumental records themselves, though it would have been strange had he been able to decipher them, since the Greeks were notoriously unfamiliar with any language but their own.

The account of Babylon given by the great geographer, Strabo, which will be presented in the next chapter, relates to a period not far from the beginning of the Christian era, and hence carries us ahead of the political story as told in the preceding books. At this time Babylon had ceased to be the capital city, though still important. Since Herodotus wrote, some five hundred years have passed. Alexander has overthrown the Persians, and Alexander’s empire in turn has been overthrown. Yet we may suppose that the old city of Babylon—the most ancient city retaining influence at that day—has not very greatly changed, except that its ancient monuments are falling into ruins. A peculiar interest attaches to this description of the last stages in the life-history of a city that has seen so many rotations of fortune, and has lived on through so many shiftings of the political kaleidoscope.

It is probable that Strabo, like Herodotus, writes as an eye-witness. In any event his account has full authority, coming from one of the greatest and most scientific of ancient geographers, who in addition to his geographical learning had a keen historical sense.a

A LATER CLASSICAL ACCOUNT OF BABYLON

Babylon is situated in a plain. The wall is 385 stadia in circumference and 32 feet in thickness. The height of the space between the towers is 50, and of the towers, 60 cubits. The roadway upon the walls will allow chariots with four horses when they meet to pass each other with ease. Whence, among the seven wonders of the world, are reckoned this wall and the hanging garden; the shape of the garden is a square, and each side of it measures four plethra. It consists of vaulted terraces, raised one above another, and resting upon cube-shaped pillars. These are hollow and filled with earth, to allow trees of the largest size to be planted. The pillars, the vaults, and the terraces are constructed of baked bricks and asphalt.

The ascent to the highest story is by stairs, and at their side are water-engines, by means of which persons, appointed expressly for the purpose, are continually employed in raising water from the Euphrates into the garden; for the river, which is a stadium in breadth, flows through the middle of the city, and the garden is on the side of the river. The tomb, also, of Belus is there. At present it is in ruins, having been demolished, it is said,[480] by Xerxes. It was a quadrangular pyramid of baked brick, a stadium in height, and each of the sides a stadium in length. Alexander intended to repair it. It was a great undertaking, and required a long time for its completion (for ten thousand men were occupied two months in clearing away the mound of earth), so that he was not able to execute what he had attempted before disease hurried him rapidly to his end. None of the persons who succeeded him attended to this undertaking; other works also were neglected, and the city was dilapidated, partly by the Persians, partly by time, and through the indifference of the Macedonians to things of this kind, particularly after Seleucus Nicator had fortified Seleucia, on the Tigris, near Babylon, at the distance of about three hundred stadia.

Both this prince and all his successors directed their care to that city, and transferred to it the seat of empire. At present it is larger than Babylon; the other is in great part deserted, so that no one would hesitate to apply to it what one of the comic writers said of Megalopolitæ in Arcadia:

On account of the scarcity of timber, the beams and pillars of the houses were made of palm wood. They wind ropes of twisted reed round the pillars, paint them over with colours, and draw designs upon them; they cover the doors with a coat of asphaltus. These are lofty, and all the houses are vaulted on account of the want of timber. For the country is bare, a great part of it is covered with shrubs, and produces nothing but the palm. This tree grows in the greatest abundance in Babylonia. It is found in Susiana; also, in great quantity, on the Persian coast, and in Carmania.

They do not use tiles for their houses, because there are no great rains. The case is the same in Susiana and in Sitacene. In Babylon a residence was set apart for the native philosophers called Chaldeans, who are chiefly devoted to the study of astronomy. Some, who are not approved of by the rest, profess to understand genethlialogy, or the casting of nativities. There is also a tribe of Chaldeans who inhabit a district of Babylonia in the neighbourhood of the Arabians and of the sea called the Persian Sea. There are several classes of the Chaldean astronomers. Some have the name of Orcheni, some Borsippeni, and many others, as if divided into sects, who disseminate different tenets on the same subjects. The mathematicians make mention of some individuals among them, as Cidenas, Naburianus, and Sudinus. Seleucus, also, of Seleucia, is a Chaldean, and many other remarkable men. Borsippa is a city sacred to Diana and Apollo. Here is a large linen manufactory. Bats of much larger size than those in other parts abound in it. They are caught and salted for food.

The country of the Babylonians is surrounded on the east by the Susans, Elymæi, and Parætaceni; on the south by the Persian Gulf, and the Chaldeans as far as the Arabian Messeni; on the west by the Arabian Scenitæ as far as Adiabene and Gordyæa; on the north by the Armenians and Medes as far as the Zagros, and the nations about that river.

The country is intersected by many rivers, the largest of which are the Euphrates and the Tigris; next to the Indian rivers, the rivers in the southern parts of Asia are said to hold the second place. The Tigris is navigable upward from its mouth to Opis and to the present Seleucia. Opis is a village and a mart for the surrounding places. The Euphrates also is navigable up to Babylon, a distance of more than three thousand stadia. The Persians, through fear of incursions from without and for the purpose of[481] preventing vessels from ascending these rivers, constructed artificial cataracts. Alexander, on arriving there, destroyed as many of them as he could, those particularly (on the Tigris from the sea) to Opis. But he bestowed great care upon the canals, for the Euphrates, at the commencement of summer, overflows. It begins to fill in the spring, when the snow in Armenia melts; the ploughed land, therefore, would be covered with water and be submerged, unless the overflow of the superabundant water of the Nile is diverted. Hence the origin of canals. Great labour is requisite for their maintenance, for the soil is deep, soft, and yielding, so that it would easily be swept away by the stream; the fields would be laid bare, the canals filled, and the accumulation of mud would soon obstruct their mouths. Then again, the excess of water discharging itself into the plains near the sea forms lakes and marshes and reed grounds, supplying the reeds with which all kinds of platted vessels are woven; some of these vessels are capable of holding water when covered over with asphaltus; others are used with the material in its natural state. Sails are also made of reeds; these resemble mats or hurdles.

It is not, perhaps, possible to prevent inundations of this kind altogether, but it is the duty of good princes to afford all possible assistance. The assistance required is to prevent excessive overflow by the construction of dams, and to obviate the filling of rivers produced by the accumulation of mud, by cleansing the canals and removing stoppages at their mouths. The cleansing of the canals is easily performed, but the construction of dams requires the labour of numerous workmen. For the earth being soft and yielding does not support the superincumbent mass, which sinks, and is itself carried away, and thus a difficulty arises in making dams at the mouth. Expedition is necessary in closing the canals to prevent all the water flowing out. When the canals dry up in the summer-time they cause the river to dry up also; and if the river is low (before the canals are closed) it cannot supply the canals in time with water, of which the country, burnt up and scorched, requires a very large quantity, for there is no difference, whether the crops are flooded by an excess or perish by drought and a failure of water. The navigation up the rivers (a source of many advantages) is continually obstructed by both the above-mentioned causes, and it is not possible to remedy this unless the mouths of the canals were quickly opened and quickly closed, and the canals were made to contain and preserve a mean between excess and deficiency of water.

Aristobulus relates that Alexander himself, when he was sailing up the river and directing the course of the boat, inspected the canals, and ordered them to be cleared by his multitude of followers; he likewise stopped up some of the mouths, and opened others. He observed that one of these canals, which took a direction more immediately to the marshes and to the lakes in front of Arabia, had a mouth very difficult to be dealt with, and which could not be easily closed on account of the soft and yielding nature of the soil; he (therefore) opened a new mouth at the distance of thirty stadia, selecting a place with a rocky bottom, and to this the current was diverted. But in doing this he was taking precautions that Arabia should not become entirely inaccessible in consequence of the lakes and marshes, as it was already almost an island from the quantity of water (which surrounded it). For he contemplated making himself master of this country, and he had already provided a fleet and places of rendezvous, and had built vessels in Phœnicia and at Cyprus, some of which were in separate pieces, others were in parts, fastened together by bolts. These, after being conveyed to Thapsacus[482] in seven distances of a day’s march, were then to be transported down the river to Babylon. He constructed other boats in Babylonia, from cypress trees in the groves and parks, for there is a scarcity of timber in Babylonia. Among the Cossæi [Kossæans] and some other tribes the supply of timber is not great.

The pretext for the war, says Aristobulus, was that the Arabians were the only people who did not send their ambassadors to Alexander; but the true reason was his ambition to be lord of all.

When he was informed that they worshipped two deities only, Jupiter and Bacchus, who supply what is most requisite for the subsistence of mankind, he supposed that, after his conquests, they would worship him as a third, if he permitted them to enjoy their former national independence. Thus was Alexander employed in clearing the canals, and in examining minutely the sepulchres of the kings, most of which are situated among the lakes.

Eratosthenes, when he is speaking of the lakes near Arabia, says, that the water, when it cannot find an outlet, opens passages underground, and is conveyed through these as far as the Cœle-Syrians, it is also compressed and forced into the parts near Rhinocolura and Mount Casius, and there forms lakes and deep pits. But I know not whether this is probable. For the overflowings of the water of the Euphrates, which form the lakes and marshes near Arabia, are near the Persian Sea. But the isthmus which separates them is neither large nor rocky, so that it was more probable that the water forced its way in this direction into the sea, either under the ground, or across the surface, than that it traversed so dry and parched a soil for more than six thousand stadia: particularly, when we observe, situated midway in this course, Libanus, Antilibanus, and Mount Casius.

Such, then, are the accounts of Eratosthenes and Aristobulus.

But Polycleitus says, that the Euphrates does not overflow its banks, because its course is through large plains; that of the mountains (from which it is supplied) some are distant two thousand, and the Kossæan Mountains scarcely one thousand stadia, that they are not very high, nor covered with snow to a great depth, and therefore do not occasion the snow to melt in great masses, for the most elevated mountains are in the northern parts above Ecbatana; towards the south they are divided, spread out, and are much lower; the Tigris also receives the greater part of the water (which comes down from them) and thus overflows its banks.

The last assertion is evidently absurd, because the Tigris descends into the same plains (as the Euphrates); and the above-mentioned mountains are not of the same height, the northern being more elevated, the southern extending in breadth, but are of a lower altitude. The quantity of snow is not, however, to be estimated by altitude only, but by aspect. The same mountain has more snow on the northern than on the southern side, and the snow continues longer on the former than on the latter. As the Tigris therefore receives from the most southern parts of Armenia, which are near Babylon, the water of the melted snow, of which there is no great quantity, since it comes from the southern side, it should overflow in a less degree than the Euphrates, which receives the water from both parts (northern and southern), and not from a single mountain only, but from many, as I have mentioned in the description of Armenia. To this we must add the length of the river, the large tract of country which it traverses in the Greater and in the Lesser Armenia, the large space it takes in its course in passing out of the Lesser Armenia and Cappadocia, after issuing out of the Taurus in its way to Thapsacus (forming the boundary between Syria below and Mesopotamia), and[483] the large remaining portion of country as far as Babylon and to its mouth, a course in all of thirty-six thousand stadia.

This, then, on the subject of the canals (of Babylonia).

Babylonia produces barley in larger quantity than any other country, for a produce of three hundredfold is spoken of. The palm tree furnishes everything else—bread, wine, vinegar, and meal; all kinds of woven articles are also procured from it. Braziers use the stones of the fruit instead of charcoal. When softened by being soaked in water, they are food for fattening oxen and sheep.

It is said that there is a Persian song in which are reckoned up three hundred and sixty useful properties of the palm.

They employ for the most part the oil of sesamum, a plant which is rare in other places.

Asphaltus is found in great abundance in Babylonia. Eratosthenes describes it as follows:

The liquid asphaltus, which is called naphtha, is found in Susiana; the dry kind, which can be made solid, in Babylonia. There is a spring of it near the Euphrates. When this river overflows at the time of the melting of the snow, the spring also of asphaltus is filled and overflows into the river, where large clods are consolidated, fit for buildings constructed of baked bricks. Others say that the liquid kind also is found in Babylonia. With respect to the solid kind, I have described its great utility in the construction of buildings. They say that boats (of reeds) are woven, which, when besmeared with asphaltus, are firmly compacted. The liquid kind, called naphtha, is of a singular nature. When it is brought near the fire, the fire catches it; and if a body smeared over with it is brought near the fire, it burns with a flame, which it is impossible to extinguish, except with a large quantity of water; with a small quantity it burns more violently, but it may be smothered and extinguished by mud, vinegar, alum, and glue. It is said that Alexander, as an experiment, ordered naphtha to be poured over a boy in a bath, and a lamp to be brought near his body. The boy became enveloped in flames, and would have perished if the bystanders had not mastered the fire by pouring upon him a great quantity of water, and thus saved his life.

Poseidonius says that there are springs of naphtha in Babylonia, some of which produce white, others black, naphtha; the first of these, I mean the white naphtha, which attracts flame, is liquid sulphur; the second, or black naphtha, is liquid asphaltus, and is burnt in lamps instead of oil.

In former times the capital of Assyria was Babylon; it is now called Seleucia upon the Tigris. Near it is a large village called Ctesiphon. This the Parthian kings usually made their winter residence, with a view to spare the Seleucians the burden of furnishing quarters for the Scythian soldiery. In consequence of the power of Parthia, Ctesiphon may be considered as a city rather than a village; from its size it is capable of lodging a great multitude of people; it has been adorned with public buildings by the Parthians, and has furnished merchandise, and given rise to arts profitable to its masters.

The kings usually passed the winter there, on account of the salubrity of the air, and the summer at Ecbatana and in Hyrcania, induced by the ancient renown of these places.

As we call the country Babylonia, so we call the people Babylonians, not from the name of the city, but of the country; the case is not precisely the same, however, as regards even natives of Seleucia, as, for instance, Diogenes, the stoic philosopher [who had the appellation of the Babylonian, and not the Seleucian].d

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We turn now from the classical accounts having to do with the manners and customs of the Mesopotamians to more modern interpretations. The account of the commercial relations of the Babylonians given in the succeeding section still has full authority, notwithstanding it was written before modern excavations had created the new science of Assyriology. No later writer has so profoundly studied the conditions of commerce and trade in antiquity as Heeren, and his accounts are still the most illuminative accessible. The monumental pictures and inscriptions, much as they have told us of the political history, and of the art, literature, and science of the Mesopotamians, have added singularly little to our knowledge of the peaceful relations of oriental nations as evidenced by their commercial dealings. The chance references of classical writers still furnish us the foundation of our knowledge of this subject, and the Assyrian monuments, where they have thrown any light on the subject at all, have chiefly served to substantiate our previous inferences. Thus, to cite a single example, the pictures on the black obelisk of Shalmaneser II show us such beasts as apes and elephants being brought as tribute to the conqueror, confirming in the most unequivocal way the belief, based on Ctesias and Strabo, that the Assyrians held commercial relations with India.

The narrative of Heeren will be supplemented, however, by accounts of the manners and customs of the people in question based upon a more recent study of the monuments, both pictorial and documentary. We have already noted that the sculptures rather than the written documents furnish us a view of the everyday life of the people. Certain matters, however, such as those pertaining to legal transactions, could not possibly be known to us except through the medium of inscriptions.a

THE COMMERCE OF THE BABYLONIANS

As the European steps into a new world as soon as he has crossed the Alps, says Heeren, so is the contrast equally striking to the Asiatic traveller upon descending from the mountainous country of Persia and Media, or Irak Ajemi, into the plain of ancient Babylon and modern Baghdad, the capital of Irak Arabi. The connection, frequently so mysterious and inexplicable, which exists between climates and countries, and even between climates and inhabitants, is here most remarkably exemplified. The manners of the people, their habitations, their dress, are all different. While in Persia and Media the garments, though long, were closely fitted to the person, they are here, on the contrary, loose and flowing. The black sheepskin cap which covered the head gives way to the lofty and proud folds of the turban, and the girdle, with its single knife, is replaced with the costly shawl and rich poniard. “On my entrance into the city of the Caliphs,” says a modern traveller (Porter, ii, 243, et seq.), “I found the streets crowded with men in every variety of dress, and of every shade of complexion. Instead of the low dwellings peculiar to Persia, the houses were several stories high, with lattice windows closely shut. The great Bazaar was full of people, and I saw on all sides innumerable shops and coffee-houses. The sound of voices and the rustling of silks reminded one of the buzzing of a swarm of bees. For even now, though but the shadow of its former splendour, Baghdad is still the grand caravanserai of Asia.” But what a change has taken place in manners and modes of life! The rigid etiquette of the Persian court has disappeared; the tone of society, the relation of the sexes, is under less constraint, and everything betokens pleasure and voluptuousness. Though[485] in the hot season the glowing sky forces the inhabitants during the day into their underground vaults, yet they enjoy the balmy coolness of night in the open air on their house tops. The delightful temperature of the winter months, from the middle of November to that of February, compensates for the inconveniences of summer, though at the same time it offers irresistible incentives to all manner of sensual enjoyments.

It must surely have been the same in former times. Can it be supposed that those who came down the Euphrates from the royal cities of Persia and Media to the great city of traffic had not the same spectacle before their eyes? But what is modern Baghdad compared with the ancient capital of the East? What crowds must have once thronged the streets and squares of that city when the caravans of the East and West, with the crews of ships trading to the south, were there collected together; when the Chaldean and Persian sovereigns, with their numberless attendants, made it their residence; when it was the emporium of the world, and the great centre of attraction to all nations! How bustling and animated must not these desolate places have been formerly, where all now is still, save the call of the Bedouin or the roaring of the lion!

The accounts of ancient Babylon given by Jewish and Grecian writers set before us a picture of wealth, magnificence, and pomp, though at the same time a less pleasing representation of luxury and licentiousness. Their banquets were carried to a disgusting excess, and the pleasures of the table degenerated into debauchery; nay, at the very time when the victorious Persians rushed into the city, the princes of Babylon were engaged in festivities; and Belshazzar was given up to intoxication in company with thousands of his lords when the hand which wrote on the wall of the royal banqueting house, and predicted his approaching fate, aroused him to the dreadful reality of his condition. But this total degeneracy of manners was above all conspicuous in the other sex, amongst whom were no traces of that reserve which usually prevails in an eastern harem. The prophet, therefore, when he denounces the fall of Babylon, describes it under the image of a luxurious and lascivious woman, who is cast headlong into slavery from the seat where she sits so effeminately. Moreover, at these orgies the women appeared, where they proceeded so far as to lay aside their garments, and with them every feeling of shame; nay, there was even a religious enactment, as we are informed by Herodotus, according to which every woman was obliged to prostitute herself to strangers in the temple of Mylitta once in her life, and was not allowed to reject any person who presented himself.

The principal cause of this profligacy of manners was the riches and luxury consequent upon extended commerce, which Babylon owed to its geographical position. Climate and religion effected the rest.

I have already had occasion to notice this advantageous situation of Babylonia, in which respect it was probably superior to every other country in Asia. While this afforded admirable facilities for traffic by land, it was equally convenient for maritime and river navigation. The two large rivers which flowed on each side of it seemed the natural channels of commercial intercourse with the interior of Asia, and the Persian Gulf by no means presented the same difficulties and dangers to the navigator as that of Arabia.

If we add to this the accounts which ancient authors have given us of the industry, manners, and civil institutions of Babylon, it will be evident that it owed its splendour and wealth to the same causes which in latter[486] times have been the occasion of an extensive commerce to the cities of Baghdad and Bassorah. They unanimously describe the Babylonians as a people fond of magnificence, and accustomed to a multitude of artificial wants, which they could not have supplied except by commercial relations with many countries, some of them very remote. In their private life, especially in their dress, costliness appears to have been more their object than either convenience or utility. Their public festivals and sacrifices were attended with immense expense, particularly in precious perfumes, with which they could not have been provided but from foreign countries. The raw materials, too, required for their celebrated manufactures—flax, cotton, and wool, and perhaps silk—were either not the produce of their soil, or certainly not in sufficient quantities for their consumption. Lastly, many of their civil institutions were of such a nature as only to be calculated for a city into which there was a continual influx of strangers. On this principle alone can be explained, not only their custom of exposing sick persons in the market-place, that they might meet with some one competent to prescribe for them, but also, and more particularly, the above-mentioned law, which obliged their women to prostitute themselves in the temple of Mylitta, and the public auction of marriageable virgins. It has been already observed that the relations of the sexes are formed in a peculiar manner in large commercial cities, and this will serve to explain many remarkable institutions of several nations in Asia.

However certain may be the evidence drawn from these principles, and the accounts of antiquity in general, viz., that Babylon was the great centre where all nations assembled, and whence they departed to their several destinations, yet it is difficult to enter in detail on the commerce of the Babylonians, and to settle with any degree of accuracy its nature and its course. The obscure traces of it which yet remain must be laboriously sought for in the works of Greek and Hebrew writers alone; the labour, however, will not be without its recompense, and the general result of this investigation will be a picture, which, though not complete in its subordinate details, will yet present a generally faithful outline.

As a preliminary step, however, let us take a glance at the products of Babylonian skill and industry, amongst which weaving of various kinds deserves our first notice. The peculiar dress of the Babylonians consisted partly of woollen, and partly of linen, or probably cotton stuffs. “They wear,” says Herodotus, “a gown of linen (or cotton) flowing down to the feet, over this, an upper woollen garment, and a white (woollen) tunic covering the whole.” This garb, which must have been too much for so warm a climate, seems to have been assumed rather for ostentation, than to meet their actual wants, and probably some alteration was made in it as the weather became warmer. Their woven stuffs, however, were not confined to domestic use, but were exported into foreign countries. Carpets, one of the principal objects of luxury in the East, the floors of the rich being generally covered with them, were nowhere so finely woven, and in such splendid colours, as at Babylon. Particular representations were seen on them, of those wonderful Indian animals, the griffin and others, with which we have become acquainted by the ruins of Persepolis, whence the knowledge of them was brought to the West. Foreign nations made use of these carpets in the decoration of their harems and royal saloons; indeed, this species of luxury appears nowhere to have been carried farther than among the Persians. With them, not only the floors, but even beds and sofas in the houses of the nobles were covered with two or three of these carpets; nay, the oldest of their sacred[487] edifices, the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargada, was ornamented with a purple one of Babylonian workmanship.

Babylonian garments were not less esteemed; those in particular called sindones were in very high repute. It appears that they were usually of cotton, and the most costly were so highly valued for their brilliancy of colour and fineness of texture, as to be compared to those of Media, and set apart for royal use; they were even to be found at the tomb of Cyrus, which was profusely decorated with every description of furniture in use amongst the Persian kings during their lives. The superiority of Babylonian robes and carpets will not be a matter of surprise, when we consider how near Babylon was to Carmania on the one side, and to Arabia and Syria on the other, and that in these countries the finest cotton was produced.

Large weaving establishments were not confined to the capital, but existed likewise in other cities and inferior towns of Babylonia, which Semiramis is said to have built on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, and which she appointed as marts for those who imported Median and Persian goods. These manufacturing towns also were, as will soon be shown in respect to Opis, staples for land traffic. The most famous of them was Borsippa, situated on the Euphrates, fifteen miles below Babylon, and mentioned in history before the time of Cyrus. These were the principal linen and cotton manufactories, and they still existed in the age of Strabo.

Besides these, the Babylonians appear to have made all kinds of apparel, and every article of luxury: such as sweet waters, which were in common use, and probably necessary, from the heat of the climate; walking-sticks delicately chased with figures of animals and other objects, and also elegantly engraved stones, were in general use amongst the Babylonians.

These stones begin to form a particular class, since the curiosities called Babylonian cylinders have become less rare. Many of them have undoubtedly served for seal rings; for in the East the seal supplies the place of a signature, or at any rate makes it valid, as we still see on specimens of Babylonian documents. The same may be said of the cylinders. We have a striking illustration of the perfection to which the Babylonians had brought the art of cutting precious stones in the collection of M. Dorow, which contains a cylinder, formed from a jasper, bearing a cuneiform inscription, and an image of a winged Ized, or Genius, in a flowing Babylonian dress, represented in the act of crushing with each hand an ostrich, the bird of Ahriman. These various manufactures and works of art presuppose an extensive commerce, because the necessary materials must have been imported from foreign countries.

From what has been already adduced, no doubt can be entertained that Babylon enjoyed a lively commerce with the principal countries of the Persian Empire. Not only did the Persian and Median lords decorate their houses with the productions of Babylonian skill, but the kings of Persia spent a great part of the year in that city with all their numerous attendants, added to which the satraps exhibited in the same capital a pomp but little inferior to royal magnificence. Owing to this intimate connection between the chief provinces of Persia and Babylonia, the country lying between this and Susa became the most populous and cultivated in Asia; and a highway was made from Babylon to Susa, which was twenty days’ journey distant, sufficiently commodious for the baggage of an army to be conveyed on it without difficulty. The investigation, however, is involved in greater difficulties as we proceed towards the east beyond Persia, though a principal country to which they traded, that is to say, Persian India, or the present[488] Belur-land, and with the parts adjacent, whence the Babylonians imported many of their most highly prized commodities, afford a clear proof of the direction and extent of this commerce.

The first article which we may confidently assert the Babylonians to have obtained, at least in part, from these countries, were precious stones, the use of which for seal rings was very general amongst them. Ctesias says expressly, that these stones came from India; and that onyxes, sardines, and the other stones used for seals were obtained in the mountains bordering on the sandy desert. The testimonies of modern travellers have proved that the account of this author is entitled to full credit; and that even at the present time the lapis-lazuli is found there in its greatest perfection; and if it be added to this that what Ctesias relates of India undoubtedly refers for the most part to these northern countries, we must consider it probable that the stones in question were found in the mountains of which we are speaking; while with regard to the sapphire of the ancients, that is to say, our lapis-lazuli, I have no doubt that it is a native of this country. A decisive proof is furnished by Theophrastus, a more recent author, but worthy of credit. “Emeralds and jaspers,” says he, “which are used as objects of decoration, come from the desert of Bactria (of Cobi). They are sought for by persons who go thither on horseback at the time of the north wind, which blows away the sand, and so discovers them.” “The largest of the emeralds called Bactrian,” says he, in another place, “is at Tyre, in the temple of Hercules. It forms a tolerably large pillar.” The passage, however, of Ctesias, to which we have referred, as a modern author has justly remarked, contains some indications, which, relatively to onyxes, appear to refer to the Ghat Mountains; since he speaks of a hot country not far from the sea.

The circumstance of large quantities of onyxes coming out of these mountains at the present day, viz., the mountains near Cambaya and Beroach, the ancient Barygaza, must render this opinion so much the more probable, as it was this very part of the Indian coast with which the ancients were most acquainted; and their navigation from the Persian Gulf to these regions, as will be shown hereafter, admits of no doubt. This opinion, however, must not lead us to conclude, that the commerce of Babylon was confined to those countries; for that they were acquainted with the above-mentioned northern districts is equally certain.

Hence also the Babylonians imported Indian dogs. This breed is asserted to be the largest and strongest that exist, and on that account the best suited for hunting wild beasts, even lions, which they will very readily attack. The great fondness felt by the Persians for the pleasures of the chase, by whom it was regarded as a chivalrous exercise, must have increased the value and use of these animals, which soon became even an object of luxury. The Persian nobles were obliged to keep a great number of them, as they formed a necessary part of their domestic economy, and their train; and they were also accustomed to take them with them on their journeys and military expeditions. Thus Xerxes, as we are assured by Herodotus, was followed by an innumerable quantity of dogs, when he marched against Greece; and an example taken from the same writer shows to what a pitch the Persian lords and satraps had carried their luxury in this particular. Tritantæchmes, satrap of Babylon, devoted to the maintenance of these Indian dogs no less than four towns of his government, which were exempted from all other taxes. It is easy to settle the extent of this branch of commerce, admitting, as is reasonable, that they were propagated in the country.

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The native country of these animals, according to Ctesias, was that whence precious stones were obtained. And this account of the ancient author has been confirmed by a modern traveller; for Marco Polo, in his account of these regions, has not forgotten to mention large dogs, which were even able to overcome lions.

A third, and no less certain class of productions, which the Persians and Babylonians obtained from this part of the world, were dyes, and amongst them the cochineal, or rather Indian lacca. The most ancient, though not quite accurate description of this insect, and of the tree upon which it settles, is also found in Ctesias. According to him, it is a native of the country near the sources of the Indus, and produces a red, resembling cinnabar. The Indians themselves use it for the purpose of dyeing their garments, to which it gives a colour even surpassing in beauty the dyes of the Persians.

Strabo has preserved to us from Eratosthenes a knowledge of the roads by which the commodities of the Indian districts, bordering on the Persian Empire, were conveyed to its principal cities, and especially to Babylon. The usual high-road, through populous and cultivated regions, first ran in a northerly direction, in order to avoid the predatory tribes which infested the desert between Persia and Media. It continued along the southern part of this desert, as far as one of the most celebrated defiles in Asia, called the Caspian gates, through which it proceeded to Hyrcania and Aria. In this latter country, taking its course along the foot of the high and woody Hyrcanian and Parthian Mountains, the road thence turned northward towards Bactra. This is the same which Alexander followed in his expedition against the Bactrians; and though he left it occasionally to attack the inhabitants of the neighbouring mountains, he always returned to it. In Arrian it bears the name of the great military road.

The great commercial route to India was the same as this as far as Aria. Here, however, it took a different, that is to say, an easterly direction, while the other proceeded northward towards Bactra. Thence it ran to Prophthasia, Arachotus, and Ortospana, where it divided itself into three branches. One of these went due east to the borders of India; perhaps the second had a similar direction, with a little inclination to the south; and the third turned northward towards Bactria and formed the great road through which India had communication with this country and its capital, Bactra. The city must then be regarded as the commercial staple of eastern Asia. Its name belongs to a people who never cease to afford matter for historical details from the time they are first mentioned.

We cannot entertain any doubt as to the persons through whose hands the commodities of India came to Bactra. It is evident, from what has been said before, that the natives of the countries bordering on Little Thibet and others, or the northern Indians of Herodotus and Ctesias, formed the caravans which travelled into the gold desert, and that it was the same people from whom western Asia obtained ingredients for dyeing, and also the finest wool.

“The country where gold is found, and which the griffins infest,” says Ctesias, “is exceedingly desolate. The Bactrians, who dwell in the neighbourhood of the Indians, assert that the griffins watch over the gold, though the Indians themselves deny that they do anything of the kind, as they have no need of the metal; but (say they) the griffins are only apprehensive on account of their young, and these are the objects of their protection. The Indians go armed into the desert, in troops of a thousand or two thousand men. But we are assured that they do not return from these expeditions till the third or fourth year.”

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It is clear, from the foregoing statement, that the Indians here mentioned were no other than the natives of northern India; and by the desert where they found gold, must be understood the sandy desert of Cobi, bounding Tangut on the west and China on the north. With regard, however, to the account of Ctesias, that caravans of a thousand or two thousand men travelled into this desert, and returned after three or four years laden with gold—what other direction could this journey have had than to the rich countries in the most remote and eastern part of Asia? I willingly leave it to the reader to judge what degree of probability there is to support this conjecture. This distant obscurity indeed prevents our having a clear view, yet this very obscurity possesses a certain charm.

We are indebted to Strabo for an account of the road by which the wares of Babylon were conveyed to the shores of the Mediterranean. It ran in a due northern direction through the midst of Mesopotamia, and reached the Euphrates near Anthemusia, five and twenty days’ journey distant, where it turned off towards the west to the Mediterranean. This could have been only a caravan road, because a numerous company of merchants would be necessary for mutual defence against the predatory nomad tribes, the Scenites, who infested the desert; or indeed for procuring a safe passage by the payment of a ransom. I cannot advance it as certain that this road was generally used under the Persian dynasty; yet it appears in the highest degree probable from the circumstance that roads were seldom or never altered by the ancients.

Another great military road, described by Herodotus, from station to station, and leading to Sardis and other Greek commercial towns in Asia Minor, was made by the Persian kings at a vast expense. It is not, indeed, to be doubted that political reasons were a principal inducement to the formation of this road, because the Persians, when they were engaged in war with the Greeks, scarcely set so high a value upon any of their provinces as they did upon Asia Minor, with which they were very desirous to further and maintain an uninterrupted communication. But we moreover learn from the description of Herodotus, that it was a commercial road, upon which caravans travelled from the chief cities of Persia into Asia Minor. According to him the road began from Susa, and not from Babylon; yet the vicinity of these two cities and their intimate connection, which has been remarked above, renders this a circumstance of no importance.

This principal road of Asia, once so famous, having undergone no other alteration than that occasioned by its different limits, is now commonly used by caravans from Ispahan to Smyrna; Tavernier has given us a full description of it. Its present course is from Smyrna to Tokat, and thence to Erivan. Only the last half has varied; for, in order to be in the direction of Ispahan, the traveller now proceeds northeast, beyond the lake of Urumiyeh; whereas the ancients, on the contrary, without going so far east, inclined more to the south, and followed the course of the Tigris.

On the whole, however, the ancient and modern roads agree in one particular, the reason of which we are told by Herodotus; that is to say, they chose the longer in preference to the shorter way, that they might travel through inhabited countries, and in security. The direct road would have led them through the midst of the steppes of Mesopotamia, where security would have been quite out of the question, on account of the roving predatory hordes. Therefore in ancient times, as well as the present, they chose the northern route along the foot of the Armenian Mountains, where the traveller enjoyed security from molestation.

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As to the rest, the division into stations was evidently adopted for the advantage of the caravans. According to Herodotus, the distance between each station was five parasangs, a journey of seven or eight hours; and this we learn from Tavernier is exactly the space which caravans consisting of loaded camels are accustomed to traverse in the course of a day; but those of horses travel much faster. As this road, however, was perfectly safe, there can be no doubt that single merchants and travellers performed the journey alone.

A third branch of Babylonian commerce in the interior of Asia had a northern direction, particularly to Armenia. The Armenians had the advantage of the Euphrates to convey their wares to Babylon, and amongst these wine, which the soil of Babylonia did not produce, was the principal. Herodotus has described this navigation; and we learn from him that the ships or floats of the Armenians were constructed similarly to those which are at present seen on the Tigris, under the appellation of kilets. The skeleton only was of wood; this had a covering of skins overlaid with reeds; and an oval form was given to the whole, so that there was no difference between the stern and prow. They were filled with goods, especially large casks of wine, and then guided down the stream by two oars. The size of these barks varied considerably; Herodotus observed some which were rated at more than five thousand talents’ burthen [i.e. about 12,000 tons by the least estimate]. On their arrival at Babylon, the conductors sold not only the cargo, but also the skeleton; the skins, however, were carried back by land on asses, which they brought with them for the purpose; since, as the historian has remarked, the force of the stream rendered it impossible for them to return up the river: thus, in Germany, the market boats which go down the Danube to Vienna never return, but are sold with the commodities which they convey.

We shall be led to conclude, that the navigation of the Euphrates must have been very important, if we recollect the great works which were performed in order to secure it. Herodotus speaks of it as extraordinary; and, truly, if we believe, as there is great probability for doing, that this trade was confined to the consumption of Babylon, it must necessarily have been very considerable, from the immense population of the city, and from the peculiarity of its soil, which, as it yielded a superfluity of some things, was necessarily quite deficient in others. Hence the Babylonians were obliged to import from the northern regions those necessaries of life which their own soil failed to produce; and we shall have more distinct notions respecting this trade if we recollect that Herodotus includes under the name of Armenia, in addition to the mountainous district which may be termed Armenia proper, also the whole of that rich and fruitful country, northern Mesopotamia.e

SHIPS AMONG THE ASSYRIANS

One does not think of the Assyrians as a naval people, yet that they also went down to the sea in ships, we may learn from Layard’s researches.

Although the Assyrians were properly an inland people, yet their conquests and expeditions, particularly at a later period, brought them into contact with maritime nations. We consequently find, on the monuments of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, frequent representations of naval engagements and operations on the seacoast. In the most ancient palace of Nimrud only bas-reliefs with a river have been discovered; they furnish us, however, with the forms of vessels, evidently of Assyrian construction—all those in[492] the sculptures of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik belonging probably to allies or to the enemy. It may be presumed that the rivers navigated by the early Assyrians, and represented in their bas-reliefs, were the Tigris, Euphrates, and Khabur.

Herodotus thus describes the Babylonian vessels of a later period: “The boats used by those who come to the city (Babylon) are of a circular form, and made of skins. They are constructed in Armenia, in the parts above Assyria. The ribs of the vessels are formed of willow boughs and branches, and covered externally with skins. They are round like a shield, there being no distinction between the head and stern. They line the bottoms of their boats with reeds (or straw), and, taking on board merchandise, principally palm wine, float down the stream. The boats have two oars, one man to each; one pulls to him, the other pushes from him. These vessels are of different dimensions; some of them are so large that they bear freight to the value of five thousand talents [£1,000,000 or $5,000,000]. The smaller have one ass on board, the larger several. On their arrival at Babylon the boatmen dispose of their goods, and also offer for sale the ribs and the reeds (or straw). They then load their asses with the skins, and return with them to Armenia, where they construct new vessels.”

I was, at one time, inclined to believe that the description of Herodotus applied to the rafts still constructed on the rivers of Mesopotamia, and used, it will be remembered, for the conveyance of the sculptures from Nimrud to Bassorah. The materials of which they are made are precisely those mentioned by the Greek historian, and they are still disposed of at Baghdad in the same way as they were in his day at Babylon. But the boats which excited the wonder of Herodotus seem to have been more solidly built, and were capable of bearing animals, to which purpose the modern raft could not be applied. They were probably more like the circular vessels now used at Baghdad, built of boughs, and sometimes covered with skins, over which bitumen is smeared, to render the whole waterproof. The boats commonly employed for the conveyance of goods and animals, on the lower part of the Tigris and Euphrates, and for ferries on all parts of those rivers, are constructed of planks of poplar wood, rudely joined together by iron nails or wooden pins, and coated with bitumen.

In a bas-relief, from the most ancient palace of Nimrud, two kinds of boats are introduced. The larger vessel contains the king in his chariot, with his attendants and eunuchs. It is both impelled by oars and towed by men. The smaller resembles that described by Herodotus. The head does not differ in form from the stern, and two men sit face to face at the oars.

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In this bas-relief are also represented men supporting themselves upon inflated skins—a manner of crossing rivers still generally practised in Mesopotamia.

The larger boats were steered by a long oar, to the end of which was attached a square or oval board. This oar was held in its place by a rope fastened to a wooden pin at the stern. By this contrivance the steersman had considerable control over the vessel, and could impel it or turn the head at pleasure. This mode of steering and propelling boats still prevails on the Mesopotamian rivers.

The vessels of the Khorsabad sculptures show a considerable advance in the knowledge of ship-building. That they did not belong to the Assyrians, but to some allied nation, appears to be indicated by the peculiar costume of the figures in them.[30] The form of the vessel is not inelegant; it is that of a sea monster, the prow being in the shape of the head of a horse, and the stern in that of the tail of a fish. Several men stand at the oars. The mast, supported by two ropes, appears to be surmounted by a box, or what is technically called a crow’s nest, which, in the galleys of the Egyptians, frequently held an archer.

But it was in the sculptures of Kuyunjik that vessels were found represented in the greatest perfection. From their position in the bas-reliefs, with reference to the besieging army, it would seem that they did not belong to the Assyrians themselves, but to a people with whom they were at war, and whom they appear to have conquered. The sea was also here indicated by the nature of the fish and marine animals; such as the star or jelly fish and a kind of shark. A castle stood on the shore; and the inhabitants, attacked on the land side, were deserting the city and taking refuge in their vessels.

The larger galleys of these bas-reliefs were of peculiar form, and may, I think, be identified with the vessels used to a comparatively late period by the inhabitants of the great maritime cities of the Syrian coast—by the people of Tyre and Sidon. Their height out of the water, when compared with the depth of keel, was very considerable. The fore part rose perpendicularly from a low sharp prow, which resembled a ploughshare, and was probably of iron or some other metal, being intended, like that of the Roman galley, to sink or disable the enemy’s ships. The stern was curved from the keel, and ended in a point high above the upper deck. There were two tiers of rowers; but whether they were divided by a deck or merely sat upon benches placed at different elevations in the hold, does not appear from the sculptures. Above the rowers was a deck, on which stood the armed men. These vessels had only one mast, to the top of which was attached a very long yard, held by ropes. In the sculptures the sails were represented as furled. The number of rowers in the bas-reliefs was generally eight on a side. Only the heads of the upper tier of men were visible; the lower tier was completely concealed, the oars passing through small apertures, or portholes, in the sides of the vessel.

Besides the vessel I have described, a smaller is represented in the same bas-reliefs. It has also a double tier of rowers; but the head and stern are differently constructed from those of the larger galley, and both being of the same shape, are not to be distinguished one from the other except by the position of the rowers. They rise high above the water, and are flat at the top, with a beak projecting outward. This vessel had no mast, and[494] was impelled entirely by oars. On the upper deck are seen warriors armed with spears, and women.

It is impossible to determine from the sculptures the size of the vessels, as the relative proportions between them and the figures they contain are not preserved. It is most probable that the four rowers in each tier are merely a conventional number, and we cannot, therefore, conjecture the length of the ship from them. No representations of naval engagements, as on the monuments of Egypt, have yet been found in the Assyrian edifices. It is most probable that, not being a maritime people, the Assyrians—as the Persians did afterwards—made use of the fleets of their allies in their expeditions by sea, furnishing warriors to man the ships.b

LAWS OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS

The sense of justice and its administration play a large part in the history of any nation; and we are so fortunate as to possess certain light on the courts and customs of Assyria.

Asshurbanapal opened his library, not only to the documents emanating from the kings, but also as a depository for collections on law, juridicial decisions, and contracts between private individuals.

The Assyrio-Chaldean legislation rested on laws and customs which were already in force under the Sumerian civilisation. A great number of tablets written in both languages give us the primitive text of the law and the corresponding Assyrian translation. Others, written in Assyrian, are full of citations from Sumerian texts.

First of all, there is a long fragment of laws relating to the family, written in Assyrian and Sumerian. They read as follows:

“It has thus been decided by the sentence of the judge: ‘If a son (is authorised) to say to his father: “Thou art not my father,” he (the son) can sell him, treat him as a forfeit, and give him in payment like money.

“‘If a son (is authorised) to say to his mother: “Thou art not my mother,” he will cut her hair off, assemble the people, and make her go out of his house.

“‘If a father (is authorised) to say to his son: “Thou art not my son,” he (the father) can shut him up in his dwelling and in the cellar.

“‘If a mother (is authorised) to say to her son: “Thou art not my son,” she can shut him up in her dwelling and in the upper chambers.

“‘If a wife (is authorised) to repudiate her husband, and to say to him: “Thou art not my husband,” she can have him thrown into the river.

“‘If a man (is authorised) to say to his wife: “Thou art not my wife,” he can have half a mina of silver paid to him.

“‘If the intendant lets a slave escape, if he dies (the slave), if he becomes infirm, if in consequence of bad treatment he becomes ill, he (the intendant) shall pay half a hin of corn a day (to the master of the slave).’”

In these ancient records we likewise find laws concerning property. One tablet seems to pertain to the observations made by a Sumerian agriculturist, which were proposed to the Assyrian agriculturists of the seventh century B.C. First of all are indicated the best conditions of crop-growing, the time for sowing, the calculating of the income, the tillage, irrigation, and the injurious animals which must be destroyed.

It is evident that, in spite of the difference in property or wealth, the interest is always the same, the calculation of interest on different sums in contracts showing that the figures bear a relation to one another.

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Loans could be made with or without interest; they could be made with or without security, and these securities were of different natures:

“For the interest of one’s money.… He has given as security.… A house, a field, an orchard, a female slave, a male slave.”

Exchanges were frequent, and from the data on the tablets, the principal things exchanged are known:

“They exchanged a house for money. They exchanged a field for money. They exchanged an orchard for money. They exchanged a female slave for money. They exchanged a male slave for money.”

Trials are inherent to human nature and to all epochs. Pleading took place in Nineveh, Assyria, and Chaldea. On this subject the following axiom used by the judges and the pleaders, holds perfectly to-day:

“He who listeneth not to his conscience, the judge will not listen to his right.”

There must have been a fairly complicated code of procedure, for traces are found of an appellative jurisdiction in which the sovereign was the final judge.

The Sumerian laws likewise fixed the form of individual contracts. The signature, “qatatu,” was the essential feature of the contract.

Signature took place by affixing the seal. One fragment of these tablets bears witness to this custom so perpetuated in the East from remotest times to the present. Herodotus mentions the existence of seals as a peculiarity of the Babylonians.

“Every Babylonian,” said he, “had his seal for his personal use.” The Assyrian “kunuk” answers, like our word “seal,” both to the instrument and the mark it left on the plastic earth.

A large number of contracts of private business concerning all the ordinary transactions of life, between individuals, on which figures the mark of a seal, has been found: contracts of sale or exchange; contracts of loan or hire; acknowledgments of debts, carrying the guaranty of a mortgage or of chattels. They read like the records of a notary’s office. These contracts, like all the documents of the palace library, are written on the traditional bricks. These are easily distinguished from other documents by their outer appearance. After a few lines given up to the names of the contracting parties, we see the imprints of their seals, or sometimes the imprint of three finger nails.

The general drift of their contracts is easy to understand; the clauses are worded in formal language which proceeds from the nature of the relations of the two parties according to the object of their agreement. As a usual thing, these contracts are very simply drawn. They begin by stating the names and qualifications of the parties who are going to enter into agreement by the affixment of their seal or by the nail mark, its substitute.

All contracting parties are not called upon to fulfil this formality; it is only those who have the title of “dominus negotii” the vendor, the lessor, the lender, those who “hold the pen” as the modern expression is.

A place reserved in the text for the fixing of seal or imprint reveals to us that their seals had different shapes. As many of these jewels have descended to us, and as there are a great number in our public and private collections, it is not without interest to describe them in more detail.

Generally they are hard stones, cut and polished in different ways. Some are conical or like a truncated pyramid, on the base of which the design is sunk. Sometimes the seal is in the shape of a spheroid or an ellipsoid. Many are cylindrical, the design being engraved on the surface of the cylinder,[496] and the imprint is obtained by rolling it on plastic earth. Every variety of precious stones has been cut for this purpose; the study of these jewels and their designs is of the greatest interest to the student of art.

After the imprint of the seals, the object of the contract is stated, then its nature and its amount, which is sometimes paid down, sometimes at quarter-day; in certain cases a security is stipulated.

As to money loans, the interest is generally fixed upon by the contracting parties. Where the contract is silent on this subject it seems as if a general law were referred to, probably that which is mentioned above.

Measurements, capacities, estimates, and prices are expressed with great precision, and thus one may determine the importance of the matter discussed in the contract. The form of drawing up, indicates that the agreement passed before a magistrate who gave, if I may thus express myself, authenticity to the stipulations agreed on between the parties, from which they could not release themselves without penalty of a fine or damages. Generally the fine was paid into the treasury of Ishtar either at Arbela or Nineveh; then the judge decreed the restitution of the sum paid over, with a certain sum for damages. The contract often contained a more or less extended prayer formula and thus placed the execution of the agreement under the protection of the gods. The contract ends with the names of witnesses and their status, and is dated on the day, month, and year of its drawing up.

The contract thus perfected was delivered to a special functionary, who registered it in the public depository, the superintendence of which was confided to him.

Here are some contracts which help us to understand the methods of drawing up, and inform us as to the nature of the most usual transactions of that epoch. We give first a contract relating to the sale of a slave; it is thus worded:

Sale of a Slave

Seal of Nabu-rikhtav-usur, son of Akhardisu, man of Hasaï, workman of Zikkar Ishtar, of the city of …

Seal of Tebetai, his son, seal of Silim Bin his son, owners of the slave sold.

The girl Tavat-khasina, slave of Nabu-rikhtav-usur.… And Nitocris obtained her for the price of sixteen drachmas of silver … for Takhu her son, on account of his marriage. She will be slave to Takhu. The price has been definitely fixed. Whoever in days to come and at no matter what epoch shall contest this before me, be it Nabu-rikhtav-usur, his sons, his sons’ sons, his brother, his brother’s sons, or any other, or his attorney, should wish to annul the bargain between Nitocris, her sons, or her sons’ sons, shall pay ten minas of silver for the revocation of this contract, it shall not be sold. Shapimayu, shepherd, Bel-shum-usur, son of Yudanani Rimbel, son of Atu, are the three men, heirs of the woman because of the binding of her hands (her first marriage) and of the interest on the wage of Karmeon who was to inherit (if he lived).

Witnesses: Akhardisu, Zikkar-nipika, Mutumhisu, Khasba.

In the month of Ulul (August) the last day of the year of Asshur-sadu-sakil.

As before Yum-shamash, Putainpaïte, Atu, Nabu-iddin-akhe, presiding.

This document is one of the most curious that we have. First of all, it contains the name of an Egyptian woman, Nitocris (Nitit-eqar), then that of Takhu her son, who bears equally an Egyptian name.

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The vendor is the daughter of Nabu-rikhtav-usur; his sons intervene in their quality of kinsmen for the sale of their slave, that is to say, the servant of their house. The money is not to be paid to Nitocris or direct descendants, but to third persons who are also designated; there are the three heirs of one named Karmeon, who would be the heir if he lived.

Here is another of the same kind:

Sale of a Slave

Seal of Khataï owner of the slave. Lu-akhi is the slave offered up. And Dannaï obtained him from Khataï for the price of twenty drachmas of silver. The price has been definitely fixed, the slave has been paid for and delivered; no annulment of the bargain can now take place. Whosoever in the future shall claim before me (the nullity of the agreement, shall pay the fine). Witnesses: Shamash, Khimar, Zabda, Kharaman, Mannuakhi, Zikkar, Shamash.

In the month of Ulul (August) the fifth day in the year of Nabu-bel-iddin. In the presence of Zikkar Shamash, the officer.

Contracts of this nature are numerous, and they raise a question on a point of the history of ancient slavery, which it would be interesting to have cleared up. What was the origin of these slaves who were at that time trafficked in, and who do not seem to have had to undergo the law of the vanquished, and who were so easily carried off after the seizure of a town? We have no information on this subject, and we must limit ourselves to register that which is given us in the above-mentioned texts.

The proprietor of the slave, Khataï, is a Syrian, whilst the slave, Lu-akhe, is an Assyrian sold to another Assyrian, Dannaï, for a sum of money equal to £3 [$15].

Sometimes the contract is not so simple. Complications may arise as to titles of the property or in its manner of transmission. It is also interesting to study the status of the contracting parties. One fact seems to be universal, it is that the stranger—Phœnician, Jew, or Egyptian—had the same civil rights of contracting, selling, or buying as Assyrian subjects.

Here is a contract of another kind. It concerns the sale of a house. Instead of their seal the parties affixed marks by pressing their thumb-nails into the clay.

Sale of a House

Nail of Sharludari, nail of Ahasshuru, nail of the woman Amat-Sula, wife of Belduru head of three legions, proprietors of the house to be sold. A house in course of construction with its beams, columns, materials, situate in the city of Nineveh, bounded by the house of Mannuki-akhe, bounded by the house of Ankia, bounded by the market-place. And Sil-asshur, the Egyptian officer, has acquired it by means of a mina of the king’s money, from Sharladuri, Ahasshuru, and the woman Amat-sula, wife of her husband. The price has been definitely fixed, the house paid for and bought, the annulment of the contract cannot be allowed.

No matter who, whoever he may be, in days to come, and no matter at what epoch, even among these persons, contests the right and contract of Sil-asshur shall pay ten minas of silver. Witnesses: Shushankhu, officer of the king, Kharmaza, head of three legions, Razu, captain of a vessel, Nabu-dur, officer, Kharmaza, captain of a vessel, Sin-shar-usur, Zidka.

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The sixteenth day of the month Sivan (May) of the year of Zaza, prefect of the town of Arpad (1692 B.C.).

Before Shamash-ukin-akhe, Litturu, Nabu-shum-iddin.

This act is, above all, remarkable for the names of the contracting parties, from which we can now recognise that people of different nationalities were allowed to make contracts in Nineveh with the same rights as the Assyrians. Thus the names of the witnesses Shushankhu and Kharmaza are Egyptian, and their original form could easily be restituted. The name of the woman Amat-Sula is Phœnician and reveals the name of an unknown divinity; literally it means servant of Sula.f

THE CODE OF KHAMMURABI

We have purposely approached the subject of Mesopotamian law from the Assyrian side, because the Assyrian laws represent the later forms of elaboration of the old Babylonian codes on which they are based. In conclusion, however, we shall present in its entirety the oldest known, and at present the most famous, of these ancient codes, that of king Khammurabi, that the reader may judge for himself as to the character of the judicial and feudal system that was in vogue in Babylonia in the third millennium before our era. This extraordinary document will repay the closest study on the part of anyone who takes the slightest interest in the evolution of human society. Until a comparatively recent date the name of Khammurabi, the ruler who first united the states of the Euphrates valley under one rule, and thus founded the Babylonian empire, was scarcely known, whereas now we have a large mass of material dating from his reign—his inscriptions, his letters, and lastly, most important of all, his code of laws. It is difficult to obtain more than a vague idea of a country merely from its name, or from the lists of its kings and their military exploits, which is all that we possess of most Assyrian and Babylonian kings. The real life of the people wholly escapes us. This reason alone would make this code inexpressibly valuable, because, by giving the laws which controlled the social and commercial life of the people, even to minute details, it gives a picture of the actual condition of the country.

Aside from its bearing on Babylonian civilisation, however, this code is one of the most important monuments in the history of the human race. It is the oldest known legal code in existence, antedating the Mosaic code by at least a thousand years, and older than the laws of Manu. It formed the basis of Babylonian legislation until the fall of the empire, and was compiled by a king living about 2300 B.C., whose rule extended from the Tigris to the Mediterranean. Khammurabi is generally identified with Amraphel, the contemporary of Abraham; and it cannot be questioned that these laws formed a part of the traditions which the Hebrews brought with them to their new home.

The Discovery of the Code

The monument containing these laws was not found at Babylon, as might have been expected, but at Susa (Shushan) in the so-called Acropolis. The discovery is due to the French excavating expedition under M. de Morgan, and was made in December and January of 1901-1902. The monument is a block of black diorite nearly eight feet high. It has been photographed and published with transcription and translation by Father V. Scheil,g the Assyriologist of the expedition, in the Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse,[499] tome IV, Textes Élamites Sémitiques. The whole inscription has since been translated by Dr. H. Wincklerh in Der Alte Orient, 4 Jahrgang, Heft 4, 1902, and the code alone by Rev. C. H. W. Johns,i The Oldest Code of Laws in the World, Edinburgh, 1903.

The obverse of the stone contains a representation in bas-relief of Khammurabi receiving the laws inscribed beneath, from Shamash, the sun-god and god of right, who is pictured seated on a throne. The king stands in a respectful attitude before him. The inscription several times mentions the fact that the laws were given by Shamash; so the very interesting theory in The Times, London, of April 14th, 1903, that the god in the picture is Bel has not much foundation. This theory would connect the code more closely with the Biblical narrative. To quote from The Times,j “The old Bel was the god who dwelt on the mountain of the world and gave laws to men and wore on his breast the tablets of destiny. So here we have a curious proof of the existence of the tradition of the mountain-given law long before the Mosaic reception on Sinai.”

Below the bas-relief on the obverse are sixteen columns of writing with 1,114 lines, and on the reverse there are twenty-eight columns with 2,510 lines. Five columns of the obverse have been erased and the stone repolished, probably to make room for an inscription of the conquering Elamite king who carried the stone away from Babylon to Susa. Possibly one of the dire calamities which Khammurabi, in the inscription, invokes the gods to send on anyone who should deface his monument, befell the unfortunate Elamite.

The writing is in a beautifully clear archaic script often used for royal inscriptions, even after the cursive writing came into use. There are a great many tablets dating from the same period written in the cursive, some of them bearing the impression of seals in the archaic. Some seven hundred lines of the inscription are devoted to proclaiming the titles of the king, his care for his subjects, his reason for erecting the monument, his maledictions on anyone who shall interfere with it. Some passages in it remind one of the majesty of portions of the Psalms. It begins:

“When Anu the supreme, king of the Anunnaki, and Bel, lord of heaven and earth, who determines the fate of the universe, to Marduk the eldest son of Ea, god of right, earthly power had assigned, among the Igigi had made him great, Babylon with his august name had named, in all the world had exalted him, in the heart (of that city) an eternal kingdom, whose foundations are firm as heaven and earth, had established,—then did Anu and Bel call me by name, Khammurabi, the great prince, who fears god, to establish justice in the land, to destroy the wicked and base, so that the strong oppress not the weak, to go forth like Shamash (the sun) over the black heads (i.e., men) to give light to the world, to promote the prosperity of the people.…”

Immediately following the code Khammurabi resumes: “The just decrees which Khammurabi, the wise king, has established; for the land a sure law and a happy reign he has procured. Khammurabi, the protecting king, I am. From the black heads, which Bel gave me, to be a shepherd over whom Marduk appointed me, I have not held aloof, have not rested; places of peace I have provided for them; I opened up a way through steep passes and sent them aid. With the powerful arms which Zamama and Ishtar endowed me, with the clear glance that Ea granted me, with the bravery which Marduk gave me, the enemy above and below I have rooted out, the deeps I have conquered, established the prosperity of the country, the dwellers in houses have I made to live in safety; a cause for fear I have not suffered to exist. The great[500] gods have chosen me. I am the peace-bringing shepherd whose staff is straight (i.e., sceptre is just), the good shadow which is spread over my city; to my heart the people of Sumer and Accad I have taken, under my protection have I caused them to live in peace, sheltered them in my wisdom, so that the strong may not oppress the weak; to counsel the orphan and the widow, their head have I raised in Babylon, the city of Anu and Bel; in E-sagila, the temple whose foundations are firm as heaven and earth, to speak justice to the land, to decide disputed questions, to remedy evil, have I written my precious words on my monument; before my picture, as of a king of justice I have placed them.… At the command of Shamash, the great judge of heaven and earth, shall justice reign in the land; by the order of Marduk my lord no destruction shall touch my statue. In E-sagila, that I love, shall my name be remembered forever; the oppressed man who has a cause for complaint shall come before my picture of the king of justice, shall read the inscription, shall apprehend my precious words, the writing shall explain to him his case, he shall see his right, his heart shall become glad, (and he shall say) ‘Khammurabi is a lord who is like a father to his subjects, he has made the word of Marduk to be feared.’ … Khammurabi, the king of righteousness, to whom Shamash gave the law, I am.”

The inscription contains also many references to public works and historical events which make it one of the most important historical records ever discovered. One reference to Asshur (Assyria) is particularly important. It occurs in the introduction to the code and records the restoration of “its protecting god to the city of Asshur.” The name Asshur occurs again in a letter written by Khammurabi to Sin-idinnam, and also in a private letter of the period, the former published by Mr. L. W. Kingk in 1901.

We now turn to the code proper, and the following points are especially noticeable throughout. The idea of responsibility is very clearly fixed,—a man who hired an animal was responsible for that animal,—if a boat he was responsible for the boat,—if he stored anything for another, or carried anything to another, he was responsible so long as the object was in his hands. Also of builders,—if a man built a house he was responsible for its solidity; a physician was held responsible for the life of his patient.

Secondly, we notice the importance of putting everything in writing—a marriage without a written contract was invalid; a man who took goods on deposit, an agent who obtained goods from a merchant, if he had no document to show for it, could claim no legal aid in case of disagreement. We have countless contract tablets from this period, containing the seals and names of witnesses to just such transactions as are provided for in the code, which show how well this principle was observed.

The law of retaliation or jus talionis is another important feature, as it is prominent also in the Mosaic code. This is expressed by the familiar phrase “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” The attempt to make the punishment balance the crime exactly is carried to such an extent that if a house fell and killed the owner, the builder was to be put to death, if the owner’s son died, the builder’s son was killed. In several of the laws we notice peculiarly humane provisions, showing that the king really had the interests of his subjects at heart, and that his words on the inscription and his desire to be a father to his people were not a vain boast. This is especially noticeable in a regulation concerning debtors (clause 45), in the provisions for inheritance, and particularly in the clause concerning the sick wife (148).

It is not to be supposed that all of the laws found in Khammurabi’s code date from his reign. Some of them were much older, as is shown by a difference[501] in the grades of culture represented. Some even assign different penalties for the same crime (see clauses 6 and 8). As Prof. Jastrowl has pointed out, the ordeal by water cannot have been invented in the same period as the minute provisions for the inheritance of property.

The so-called Sumerian domestic laws which are very similar to those before us were known prior to the discovery of Khammurabi’s code, and are known to have been already in use at that time. The code contains something like 280 clauses, and is arranged in comparatively systematic order. Space has not permitted the giving of all the provisions in detail. The plan has been to deal with each class of laws as a whole, in some cases giving merely the synopsis of a class.[31]

Miscellaneous Regulations

1. If a man weaves a spell about another man (i.e., accuses him), and throws a curse on him, and cannot prove it, the one who wove the spell shall be put to death.

2. If a man weaves a spell about another man, and has not proved it, he on whom suspicion was thrown shall go to the river, shall plunge into the river. If the river seizes hold of him, he who wove the spell shall take his house. If the river shows him to be innocent, and he is uninjured, he who threw suspicion on him shall be put to death. He who plunged into the river shall take the house of him who wove the spell on him.

3. If a man has accused the witnesses in a lawsuit of malice and has not proved what he said; if the suit was one of life (and death), that man shall be put to death.

4. If he has sent corn and silver to the witnesses, he shall bear the penalty of the suit.

5. If a judge has delivered a sentence, has made a decision and fixed it in writing, and if afterwards he has annulled his sentence, that judge for having altered his decision shall be brought to judgment; for the penalty inflicted in his decision, twelve-fold shall he pay it, and publicly shall they remove him from his judgment seat. He shall not come back and shall not sit in judgment with the other judges.

6. If a man has stolen property from the god or palace, that man shall be put to death; and he who received the stolen goods from his hands shall be put to death.

7. If a man has bought or received in deposit, silver, gold, a man or woman slave, an ox, a sheep, an ass, or whatever it may be, from the hands of a son of another or a slave of another, without witness or contract, that man shall be put to death as a thief.

8. If anyone has stolen an ox, a sheep, an ass, a pig, or a boat, if it belongs to the god or to the palace, he shall return it thirty-fold; if it belongs to a noble he shall return it ten-fold; if the thief has nothing with which to repay, he shall be put to death.

9. If anyone who has lost something, finds his something that was lost in the hand (possession) of another; if the man in whose hand the lost object was found says: “A trader sold it to me, before witnesses I paid for it,” and if the owner of the lost object says: “Witnesses who know my lost object I will bring,” then shall the purchaser bring the seller who sold it to him, and the witnesses before whom he bought it, and the owner of the lost [502]object shall bring witnesses who know his lost goods: the judge shall consider their words, and the witnesses before whom the purchase was made, and the witnesses who know the object shall bear testimony before God. The seller is a thief and shall be put to death. The owner of the lost object shall receive the object; the buyer shall get back the money he paid from the house of the seller.

10. If the buyer does not bring the seller who sold it to him and the witnesses before whom he bought it; if the owner of the lost object brings the witnesses who know his object, the buyer is a thief and shall be killed; the owner shall get his lost object.

11. If the owner of the lost object does not bring his expert witnesses, then he is a miscreant; he has accused falsely, he shall die.

12. If the seller has gone to his fate, the buyer shall receive from the house of the seller five times the costs of the suit.

13. If that man has not his witnesses at hand, the judge shall give him a respite of six months. If in six months his witnesses do not come, that man is a miscreant and shall bear the costs of the suit.

14. If anyone steals the minor son of a man, he shall be put to death.

Regulations concerning Slaves

15. If anyone has caused a male slave of the palace or a female slave of the palace, the male slave of a noble or the female slave of a noble, to go out of the gate, he shall be put to death.

16. If anyone harbours in his house a runaway male or female slave from the palace or the house of a noble, and does not bring them out at the command of the majordomo, the master of the house shall be put to death.

17. If anyone has caught a runaway male or female slave in the field, and brings him back to his master, the master of the slave shall give him two shekels of silver.

18. If that slave will not name his owner, to the palace he shall bring him; his case shall be investigated; to his owner one shall bring him.

19. If he retains that slave in his house, and if, later, the slave is found in his hands, that man shall be put to death.

20. If the slave escapes from the house of the one who caught him, that man shall swear to the owner of the slave in the name of God and he shall be quit.

Provisions concerning Robbery

21. If anyone has broken a hole in a house, in front of that hole one shall kill him and bury him.

22. If anyone has committed a robbery and is caught, he shall be killed.

23. If the robber is not caught, the man who has been robbed shall make claim before God to everything stolen from him, and the town and its governor within the territory and limits of which the robbery took place shall give back to him everything he has lost.

24. If it was a life, the city and governor shall pay one mina of silver to his people.

25. If a fire breaks out in the house of a man, and some one who has gone thither to put it out raise his eyes to the goods of the master of the house, and take the goods of the master of the house, that man shall be thrown into that fire.

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Concerning Leases and Tillage

Special rules governed the estates of officers or constables in the king’s employ. They seem to have had land given them by the state, which was inalienable; they might not sell it, deed it to wife or daughter, or give it in return for a debt. In the absence of the proprietor he might give the land into the keeping of another to manage it for him. This was usually done by a son or wife. Three years’ absence or neglect forfeited his claim to the land. No man could send a substitute in his place on pain of death for both himself and the substitute. The king’s officers could buy land in their own right which they were free to dispose of at pleasure, and they could also sell the land which was theirs by official right to another officer.

42. If anyone has taken a field to cultivate, and has not made grain to grow in the field, he shall be charged with not having done his duty in the field; he shall give grain equal to that yielded by the neighbouring field to the owner of the field.

43. If he has not tilled the field, has let it lie, he shall give to the owner of the field grain equal to the yield of the neighbouring field; and the field which he left untilled, he shall harrow, sow, and return it to its owner.

44. If anyone has hired an unreclaimed field for three years, to open (cultivate) it, but has neglected it, has not opened the field, in the fourth year he shall harrow the field, hoe it, and plant it and return it to the owner of the field, and 10 GUR of grain for every 10 GAN he shall measure out.

45. If a man has rented his field to a cultivator for the produce and he has received his produce, and then a storm has come and destroyed the harvest, the loss is the cultivator’s.

46. If he has not received the produce from his field, but has given his field on a half or a third share, the grain which is in the field shall the owner and cultivator share according to their contract.

47. If the cultivator, because in the first year he did not obtain his living (?), had the field cultivated by another, the owner of the field shall not blame this cultivator, his field has been cultivated; at the time of harvest he shall receive grain according to his contract.

48. If a man has a debt and a storm has devastated his field and carried off the harvest, or if the grain has not grown on account of a lack of water, in that year he shall give no grain to the creditor; he shall soak his tablet (in water, i.e., alter it), and shall pay no interest for that year.

49. If anyone has borrowed money from a merchant and given a ploughed field sown with grain or sesame to the merchant and said to him: “Cultivate the field, harvest and take the grain or sesame which is thereon;” when the cultivator has raised grain or sesame in the field, at the time of harvest the owner of the field shall take the grain or sesame which is in the field, and shall give to the merchant grain in return for the money with its interest, which he took from the merchant, and for the support of the cultivator.

50. If he has given him an (already) cultivated field (of grain) or a field of sesame, the grain or sesame which is in the field shall the owner of the field receive; money and interest to the merchant he shall give.

51. If he has no money with which to pay him, he shall give to the merchant sesame equal to the value of the money which he received from the merchant, with interest according to the king’s tariff.

52. If the cultivator has not raised grain or sesame in the field, his contract is not altered.

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Concerning Canals

The canals built by Khammurabi are frequently referred to in his inscriptions so that we expect to find them mentioned in his laws. Clauses 53-56 are in connection with this subject:

53. If anyone is too lazy to keep his dikes in order and fails to do so, and if a breach is made in his dike and the fields have been flooded with water, the man in whose dike the breach was opened shall replace the grain which he has destroyed.

54. If he is not able to replace the grain, he and his property shall be sold, and the people whose grain the water carried off shall share (the proceeds).

55. If anyone opens his irrigation canals to let in water, but is careless and the water floods the field of his neighbour, he shall measure out grain to the latter in proportion to the yield of the neighbouring field.

56. If anyone lets in the water and it floods the growth of his neighbour’s field, he shall measure out to him 10 GUR of grain for every 10 GAN (of land).

Each cultivator had an intricate system of small water-ways covering his land, into which he let water from the main canal at certain times. When he had watered his field he dammed up the connection again, but if he neglected to do so the water would keep on coming in and eventually flood his neighbour’s land.

If a shepherd let his flock pasture in a field without permission, he was compelled to return a definite amount of grain to the owner. Anyone cutting down a tree without permission had to pay one-half of a mina of silver.

About thirty-five clauses, from 65 to 100, have been erased. This gap has been partly filled in from some old fragments of another supposed copy of this code in the British Museum. One of these supplementary fragments speaks of house rent: if a tenant has paid his rent for a whole year, and the landlord turns him out before the end of his term, the landlord shall pay back to the tenant a proportionate amount of the money which the tenant gave him.

Commerce, Debt

The reverse of the stele begins with a continuation of the laws regulating commercial relations, which are extremely important as showing a highly developed system. If an agent found no opening where he went, he was to return the capital to the merchant; also if any mishap befell him in the place to which he went. If he were robbed by the way, he was to swear before God that the loss was through no fault of his and could then go free. The agent was to make out a written statement of the goods received, and received also a receipt for the money paid to the merchant. Without this receipt he could lay no claim to his money in case of disagreement.

Curiously enough the wine sellers appear to have been women. We read in clause 109: If a wine merchant when rebels meet in her house does not arrest them and take them to the palace, that wine merchant shall be put to death. 110. If a votary who does not live in the temple shall open a tavern or enter a tavern to drink, she shall be burned.

Laws concerning debt are treated of in clauses 113-119. A man might be imprisoned for debt, or, as in the Mosaic code, he might sell his wife and children into bondage for debt, but only for three years. We have a peculiarly doleful picture of a prison of this period, in a letter dating from[505] the reign of Khammurabi. It is written by an imprisoned man to his master. He describes his place of confinement as a “house of want,” and begs for food and clothing, to keep him from death and being devoured by dogs. If the debtor died a natural death in his confinement, the case was at an end, but:

116. If the confined man has died in the house of his confinement as a result of blows or ill-treatment, the owner of the prisoner shall call his merchant to account. If the man was free-born, his son (of the merchant) one shall kill; if he was a slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver, and shall lose possession of everything which he gave him.

117. If anyone has an indebtedness, sells wife, son, or daughter for gold or gives them into bondage, three years in the house of their buyer or their taskmaster shall they labour; in the fourth year shall he let them go free.

118. If he gives away a man or woman slave into servitude, and if the merchant passes them on, sells them for money, there is no protest.

119. If anyone has contracted a debt and sells a slave who has borne him children, the money which the merchant paid, the owner of the slave shall pay back to him and buy back his slave.

Clauses 120-126 are in regard to depositing grain and other property in another’s keeping. A written document was necessary and the person who received the deposit made responsible for what had been intrusted to him.

120. If anyone has stored his grain in the house of another for keeping, and a disaster has happened in the granary, or the owner of the house has opened the granary and taken out grain, or if he disputes as to the whole amount which was deposited with him, the owner of the grain shall pursue (claim) his grain before God, and the master of the house shall return undiminished to its owner the grain which he took.

Domestic Legislation, Divorce, Inheritance

The laws referring to domestic legislation are especially interesting as showing the position of women. We know from other documents of the period that they could hold property in their own name and carry on business, and we see here that their position was respected.

127. If anyone has caused a finger to be pointed at a votary or the wife of a man and has not proved (his accusation against) that man, one shall bring him before the judge and brand his forehead.

A contract was necessary for legal marriage:

128. If anyone has married a wife but has not drawn up a contract with her, that woman is not a wife.

If a man was taken captive and if, during his absence, his wife married some one else while there was means of subsistence in the house, she was drowned. But if she had no means of support, her action was considered justifiable. If, in the latter case, the husband returned, his wife was to return to him; but the children of her second marriage remained with their father. If the man was a fugitive and had abandoned his native city, but returned after a time and wanted his wife again, she was not to return to him.

The laws concerning divorce were much like those existing in Mohammedan countries to-day. If a woman were childless and her husband wished to divorce her, she received her dowry and marriage portion and returned to her father’s house. If she had borne children and her husband still wanted to divorce her, she received besides her marriage portion sufficient means to bring up her children; and after they were grown, of whatever they received[506] they were to give her a son’s share. She was also free to marry again. If the woman were divorced through a fault of her own, she received nothing.

141. If a man’s wife, who lives in his house, sets her face to go out, causes discord, wastes her house, neglects her husband, to justice one shall bring her. If her husband says, “I repudiate her,” he shall let her go her way, he shall give her nothing for her divorce. If her husband says, “I do not repudiate her,” her husband may take another wife; that (first) wife shall stay in the house of her husband as a slave.

A woman who wanted a divorce, if she could show fault in her husband for it, might take her marriage portion and go home; but if the fault were hers she was thrown into the water.

A peculiarly humane provision is the following:

148. If anyone has taken a wife and a sickness has seized her, and if his face is set towards taking another wife, he may take (her), but his wife whom the sickness has seized he may not repudiate her, she shall live in the house he has built, and as long as she lives he shall support her.

149. If that woman does not desire to live in the house of her husband, he shall give her the marriage portion she brought from her father’s house, and she shall go.

150. If anyone has given his wife, field, garden, house, or property, and has left her a sealed tablet; after (the death of) her husband, her children shall contest nothing with her. The mother shall leave her inheritance to the child whom she loves; to a brother she shall not give it.

Laws of inheritance are more particularly dealt with in clauses 162-184:

162. If anyone has married a wife, and she has borne him children; if that woman has gone to her fate, of her marriage portion her father shall claim nothing; her marriage portion belongs to her children.

163. If anyone has married a wife and she has borne him no children; if that woman has gone to her fate, if the dowry which that man took from the house of his father-in-law his father-in-law has returned; on the marriage portion of that woman the husband shall make no claim, it belongs to the house of her father.

164. If his father-in-law has not returned him the dowry, from her marriage portion he shall deduct all her dowry; and her marriage portion he shall return to the house of her father.

165. If any man to his son, the first in his eyes, has given a field, garden, and house, and has written a tablet for him; if afterwards the father has gone to his fate, when the brothers make a division, the present which the father gave him he shall keep; in addition, the goods of their father’s house in equal parts they shall share (with him).

166. If a man has taken wives for his sons, for his little son a wife has not taken, if afterwards the father has gone to his fate, when the brothers divide the goods of their father’s house, to their little brother, who has not taken a wife, besides his portion, money for a dowry they shall give him, and a wife they shall cause him to take.

167. If a man has married a woman, if she has borne him children, if that woman has gone to her fate; if afterwards he has taken another wife, who has borne him children, and if afterwards the father has gone to his fate: the children shall not divide the property according to their mothers; they shall take the marriage portion of their mother; their father’s property they shall share in equal parts.

168. If anyone has set his face to cut off his son and says to the judge, “I cut off my son,” the judge shall inquire into the matter; and if the son[507] has no grievous offence, which would lead to being cut off from sonship, the father shall not cut off his son from sonship.

169. If he has a grievous crime against his father to the extent of cutting him off from sonship, for the first time he (the father) shall turn away his face; but if he commit a grievous crime a second time, the father shall cut off his son from sonship.

170. If to a man his wife has borne children, and if his servant has borne him children; if the father during his life has said: “You are my children,” to the children which his servant bore him, and has counted them with his wife’s children: afterwards if that father has gone to his fate, the goods of the father’s house shall the children of the wife and the children of the servant share on equal terms. In the division the children of the wife shall choose (first) and take.

171. And if the father, during his life to the children which his slave bore him has not said, “You are my children,” afterwards when the father has gone to his fate, the property of the father’s house the children of the servant shall not share with the children of the wife. The freedom of the servant and her children shall be assured. The children of the wife cannot claim the children of the servant for servitude. The wife shall take her marriage portion and the gift which her husband gave her and wrote on a tablet for her, and shall remain in the house of her husband. As long as she lives she shall keep them, and for money shall not give them; after her they belong to her children.

172. If her husband has not given her a gift, her marriage portion she shall receive entire; and of the property of her husband’s house, a portion like a son she shall take. If her children force her to go out of the house, the judge shall inquire into the matter, and if a fault is imputed to the children, that woman shall not go out of the house of her husband. If that woman has set her face to go, the gift which her husband gave her she shall leave to her children. The marriage portion which came from her father’s house she shall keep, and the husband of her choice she shall take.

173. If that woman, there where she has entered, to her second husband has borne children, and if afterward that woman dies, her marriage portion shall her earlier and her later children divide between them.

174. If to her second husband she has borne no children, her marriage portion shall the children of her first husband take.

175. If a free-born woman has married a palace slave or the slave of a noble, and has borne children; the owner of the slave on the children of the free-born woman shall make no claim for servitude.

176. And if a free-born woman marries a slave of the palace or the slave of a noble, and if when he married her she entered the house of the palace slave or of the nobleman’s slave with a marriage portion from the house of her father, and from the time that they set up their house together have acquired property; if afterward either the slave of the palace or the slave of the nobleman has gone to his fate, the free-born woman shall take her marriage portion, and whatever her husband and she since they began housekeeping have made, into two parts they shall divide; one-half the owner of the slave shall take, one-half the free-born woman shall take for her children.

176 a. If the free-born woman had no marriage portion, everything which her husband and she had acquired since they kept house together, into two parts they shall divide. The owner of the slave one-half shall take: one-half shall the free-born woman take for her children.

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177. If a widow, whose children are still young, has set her face to enter the house of another without consulting the judge, she shall not enter. When she enters another house the judge shall inquire into that which was left from the house of her former husband; and the goods of her former husband’s house to her later husband and to that woman (herself) one shall confide, and a tablet one shall make them deliver. They shall keep the house and bring up the little ones; no utensil shall they give for money. The buyer who shall buy a utensil belonging to the children of the widow, shall lose his money; the property shall return to its owner.

178. If a votary or a vowed woman to whom her father has given a marriage portion, a tablet has written, and on the tablet he wrote for her did not write, “After her she may give to whom she pleases,” has not permitted her all the wish of her heart; afterwards when the father has gone to his fate, her field and garden shall her brothers take, and according to the value of her portion they shall give her grain, oil, and wool, and her heart they shall content. If her brothers have not given her grain, oil, and wool according to the value of her portion, and have not contented her heart, she shall give her field and garden to a cultivator who is pleasing to her, and her cultivator shall sustain her. The field, garden, and whatever her father gave her she shall keep as long as she lives, but for money she shall not give it, to another she shall not part with it; her sonship (inheritance) belongs to her brother.

179. If a votary or a vowed woman to whom her father has given a marriage portion, and has written her a tablet, and on the tablet which he wrote her has written, “property where (to whom) it seems good to her to give (let her give),” has allowed her the fulness of her heart’s desire: afterwards when the father has gone to his fate, her property after her death to whomever it pleases her she shall give; her brothers shall not strive with her.

180. If a father to his daughter, a bride or vowed woman, a marriage portion has not given; after the father has gone to his fate, she shall receive of the possession of the father’s house a share like one son. As long as she lives she shall keep it; her property after her death shall belong to her brothers.

181. If a father has vowed to God a hierodule or a temple virgin, and has gone to his fate, she shall have a share in the possession of the father’s house equal to one-third her portion as one of his children. As long as she lives she shall keep it. Her property after her death shall belong to her brothers.

182. If a father to his daughter, a votary of Marduk of Babylon, has not given a marriage portion, a tablet has not written; after the father has gone to his fate she shall share with her brothers in the possession of her father’s house; a third of her share as his child (she shall receive). Control over it shall not go from her. The votary of Marduk shall give her property after her death to whomever it pleases her.

183. If a father to his daughter by a concubine has given a marriage portion, and has given her to a husband and has written her a tablet; after the father has gone to his fate, in the goods of the father’s house, she shall not share.

184. If a man to his daughter by a concubine a marriage portion has not provided, to a husband has not given her; after the father has gone to his fate her brothers shall provide her a marriage portion according to the value of the father’s house, and to a husband they shall give her.

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Laws concerning Adoption

185. If a man has taken a small child as a son in his own name and has brought him up, that foster child shall not be reclaimed.

186. If a man has taken a small child for his son, and if when he took him his father and his mother he offended, that foster child shall return to the house of his father.

187. The son of a familiar slave in the palace service, or the son of a vowed woman, cannot be reclaimed.

188. If an artisan has taken a child to bring up, and has taught him his handicraft, no one can make a complaint.

189. If he has not taught him his handicraft, that foster child shall return to the house of his father.

190. If a man, a small child whom he took for his son and brought him up, with his own sons has not counted, that foster son shall return to his father’s house.

191. If a man who has taken a small child for his son and has brought him up, has afterwards made a home for himself and acquired children, if he sets his face to cut off the foster child; that child shall not go his way. His adoptive father shall give him of his goods one-third a son’s share, and then he shall go. Of the field, garden, and house he shall not give him.

192. If the son of a favourite slave or the son of a vowed woman to the father who brought him up and to the mother who brought him up say, “Thou art not my father, thou art not my mother,” one shall cut out his tongue.

193. If the son of a palace favourite or the son of a vowed woman has known the house of his father and has hated the father who brought him up and the mother who brought him up, and has gone to the house of his father, one shall tear out his eyes.

194. If a man has given his son to a nurse and if his son has died in the hand of the nurse, and if the nurse, without the consent of his father or mother, another child has nourished, she shall be brought to account and because she nourished another child, without the consent of the father and mother, one shall cut off her breasts.

Laws of Recompense

195. If a son has struck his father, one shall cut off his hands.

196. If one destroys the eye of a free-born man, his eye one shall destroy.

197. If anyone breaks the limb of a free-born man, his limb one shall break.

198. If the eye of a nobleman he has destroyed, or the limb of a nobleman he has broken, one mina of silver he shall pay.

199. If he has destroyed the eye of the slave of a free-born man or has broken the limb of the slave of a free-born man, he shall pay the half of its price.

200. If he knocks out the teeth of a man who is his equal, his teeth one shall knock out.

201. If the teeth of a freedman he has made to fall out, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver.

202. If anyone has injured the strength of a man who is high above him, he shall publicly be struck with sixty strokes of a cowhide whip.

203. If he has injured the strength of a man who is his equal, he shall pay one mina of silver.

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204. If he has injured the strength of a freedman, one shall cut off his ear.

205. If the slave of a man has injured the strength of a free-born man, one shall cut off his ear.

206. If a man has struck another in a quarrel and has wounded him, and that man shall swear, “I did not strike him wittingly,” he shall pay the doctor.

207. If he dies of the blows, he shall swear again, and if it was a free-born man, he shall pay one-half a mina of silver.

208. If it was a freedman, he shall pay one-third a mina of silver.

209. If anyone has struck a free-born woman and caused her to let fall what was in her womb, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for what was in her womb.

210. If that woman dies, one shall put his daughter to death.

211. If it was a freedwoman whom he caused to let fall that which was in her womb, through his blows, he shall pay five shekels of silver.

212. If that woman dies, he shall pay one-half a mina of silver.

213. If he has struck a man’s maid-servant and caused her to drop what was in her womb, he shall pay two shekels of silver.

214. If that maid-servant dies he shall pay one-third a mina of silver.

Regulations concerning Physicians and Veterinary Surgeons

215. If a doctor has treated a man for a severe wound with a lancet of bronze and has cured the man, or has opened a tumour with a bronze lancet and has cured the man’s eye; he shall receive ten shekels of silver.

216. If it was a freedman, he shall receive five shekels of silver.

217. If it was a man’s slave, the owner of the slave shall give the doctor two shekels of silver.

218. If a physician has treated a free-born man for a severe wound with a lancet of bronze and has caused the man to die, or has opened a tumour of the man with a lancet of bronze and has destroyed his eye, his hands one shall cut off.

219. If a doctor has treated the slave of a freedman for a severe wound with a bronze lancet and has caused him to die, he shall give back slave for slave.

220. If he has opened his tumour with a bronze lancet and has ruined his eye, he shall pay the half of his price in money.

221. If a doctor has cured the broken limb of a man, or has healed his sick body, the patient shall pay the doctor five shekels of silver.

222. If it was a freedman, he shall give three shekels of silver.

223. If it was a man’s slave, the owner of the slave shall give two shekels of silver to the doctor.

224. If the doctor of oxen and asses has treated an ox or an ass for a grave wound and has cured it, the owner of the ox or the ass shall give to the doctor as his pay one-sixth of a shekel of silver.

225. If he has treated an ox or an ass for a severe wound and has caused its death, he shall pay one-fourth of its price to the owner of the ox or the ass.

Illegal Branding of Slaves

226. If a barber-surgeon, without consent of the owner of a slave, has branded the slave with an indelible mark, one shall cut off the hands of that barber.

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227. If anyone deceives the barber-surgeon and makes him brand a slave with an indelible mark, one shall kill that man and bury him in his house. The barber shall swear, “I did not mark him wittingly,” and he shall be guiltless.

Regulations concerning Builders

228. If a builder has built a house for some one and has finished it, for every SAR of house he shall give him two shekels of silver as his fee.

229. If a builder has built a house for some one and has not made his work firm, and if the house he built has fallen and has killed the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.

230. If it has killed the son of the house-owner, one shall kill the son of that builder.

231. If it has killed the slave of the house-owner, he (the builder) shall give to the owner of the house slave for slave.

232. If it has destroyed property, he shall restore everything he destroyed; and because the house he built was not firm and fell in, out of his own funds he shall rebuild the house that fell.

233. If a builder has built a house for some one and has not made its foundations solid, and a wall falls, that builder out of his own money shall make firm that wall.

Regulations concerning Shipping

234. If a boatman has caulked (?) a boat of 60 GUR for a man, he shall give him two shekels of silver as his fee.

235. If a boatman has caulked a boat for a man, and has not made firm his work; if in that year that ship is put into use and it suffers an injury, the boatman shall alter that boat and shall make it firm out of his own funds; and he shall give the strengthened boat to the owner of the boat.

236. If a man has given his boat to a boatman on hire, if the boatman has been careless, has grounded the boat or destroyed it, the boatman shall give a boat to the owner of the boat in compensation.

237. If a man has hired a boatman and a boat, and has loaded it with grain, wool, oil, dates, or whatever the cargo was; if that boatman has been careless, has grounded the ship and destroyed all that was in it, the boatman shall make good the ship which he grounded and whatever he destroyed of what was in it.

238. If a man has grounded a boat and has refloated it, he shall pay the half of its price in silver.

239. If a man has hired a boatman, he shall give 6 GUR of grain a year.

240. If a freight boat has struck a ferry-boat, and grounded it, the owner of the grounded boat shall make a statement before God of everything that was destroyed in the boat and (the owner of) the freight boat which grounded the ferry-boat shall make good the boat and whatever was destroyed.

Regulations concerning the Hiring of Animals, Farming, Wages, etc.

241. If a man has forced an ox to too hard labour, he shall pay one-third a mina of silver.

242. If a man hires (the ox) for one year, he shall pay 4 GUR of grain as the hire of a working ox.

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243. For the hire of an ox to carry burdens (?) he shall give 3 GUR of grain to its owner.

244. If anyone has hired an ox or an ass, and if in the field a lion has killed it, the loss is its master’s.

245. If anyone has hired an ox and has caused it to die through ill-treatment or blows, he shall return ox for ox to the owner of the ox.

246. If a man has hired an ox and has broken his leg or has cut its nape, he shall return ox for ox to the owner of the ox.

247. If a man has hired an ox and has knocked out its eye, he shall give one-half its value in silver to the owner of the ox.

248. If anyone has hired an ox and has broken its horn, cut off its tail, or has injured its nostrils, he shall pay one-fourth of its price in silver.

249. If anyone has hired an ox and God (an accident) has struck him and he has died, he who hired the ox shall swear by the name of God and be guiltless.

250. If a furious ox in his charge gores a man and kills him, that case cannot be brought to judgment.

251. If an ox has pushed a man (with his horns) and in pushing showed him his vice, and if he has not blunted his horns, has not shut up his ox: if that ox gores a free-born man and kills him, he shall pay one-half a mina of silver.

252. If it is the slave of a man he shall give one-third of a mina of silver.

253. If a man has hired a man to live in his field and has furnished him seed grain (?) and oxen, and has bound him to cultivate the field; if that man has stolen grain or plants and they are seized in his possession, one shall cut off his hands.

254. If he has taken the seed grain (?), for himself exhausted the oxen; he shall make restitution according to the amount of the grain which he took.

255. If he has given out the man’s oxen on hire or has stolen the grain, has not caused it to grow in the field; one shall bring that man to judgment, for 100 GAN of land he shall measure out 60 GUR of grain.

256. If his community (clan) will not take up his cause, one shall leave him in the field among the oxen. (?)

257. If a man has hired a harvester, he shall give him 8 GUR of grain for one year.

258. If a man has hired an ox driver (?), he shall give him 6 GUR of grain for one year.

259. If a man has stolen a watering wheel (Gis-Apin) from the field, he shall pay 5 shekels of silver to the owner of the wheel.

260. If he has stolen a watering bucket[32] or a plough, he shall pay three shekels of silver.

261. If a man has hired a herdsman to pasture cattle and sheep, he shall pay him 8 GUR of grain a year.

262. If a man, oxen or sheep … [the stone is here defaced.]

263. If he has destroyed the oxen or sheep which were given him, ox for ox and sheep for sheep he shall restore to their owner.

264. If a herdsman, to whom oxen and sheep have been given for pasturing, has received his wages, whatever was agreed upon, and his heart is contented; if he has diminished the oxen or the sheep, has lessened the offspring, he shall give offspring and produce according to the words of his agreement.

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265. If a herdsman, to whom oxen and sheep have been given for pasturing, has deceived, has changed the price, or has given them for money; he shall be brought to judgment and he shall return to their owner oxen and sheep ten times that which he stole.

266. If in the fold a disaster is brought about from God, or if a lion has killed, the herdsman shall purge himself before God, and the owner of the fold shall bear the disaster to the fold.

267. If the herdsman has been careless and in the fold has caused loss, the shepherd shall make good in oxen and sheep the loss he caused in the fold, and shall give them to their owner in good condition.

268. If a man has hired an ox for threshing, 20 KA of grain is its hire.

269. If he has hired an ass for threshing, 10 KA of grain is its hire.

270. If he has hired a young animal for threshing, 1 KA of grain is its hire.

271. If anyone has hired oxen, a cart, and driver, he shall pay 180 KA of grain for one day.

272. If anyone has hired a cart alone, he shall give 40 KA of grain for one day.

273. If anyone has hired a day labourer, from the first of the year to the fifth month, he shall give him 6 SHE of silver a day; from the sixth month to the end of the year he shall give him 5 SHE of silver a day.

274. If anyone hires an artisan,—The wages of a … are 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a brick maker (?), 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a tailor, 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a stone cutter (?) … SHE of silver; the wages of a … SHE of silver; the wages of a … SHE of silver; the wages of a carpenter, 4 SHE of silver; the wages of a … 4 SHE of silver; the wages of … SHE of silver; the wages of a mason … SHE of silver,—a day he shall give.

275. If anyone has hired a (ferry-boat?) its hire is 3 SHE of silver a day.

276. If he has hired a freight boat, he shall give 2½ SHE of silver a day as its hire.

277. If anyone has hired a boat of 60 GUR he shall give one-sixth of a shekel of silver as its hire.

Regulations concerning the Buying of Slaves

278. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and before the end of the month the bennu-sickness has fallen upon him, he shall return him to the seller, and the buyer shall take back the money which he paid.

279. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and a complaint is made, the seller shall answer for the complaint.

280. If anyone has bought another man’s man or woman slave in a strange land; when he has come into the country and the owner of the man or woman slave recognises his property; if that man or woman slave are natives: without money he shall grant them their freedom.

281. If they are from another country, the buyer shall declare before God the money which he paid; the owner of the man or woman slave shall give to the merchant the money which he paid, and shall recover his man or woman slave.

282. If a slave has said to his master, “Thou art not my master,” one shall bring him to judgment as his slave, and his master shall cut off his ear.

Having presented this remarkable code in its entirety, it is hardly necessary to comment upon it at length. It will repay the closest examination[514] on the part of anyone who is interested in the manners and customs of this remote period. Prior to the excavations in Mesopotamia, no historian could have dared hope that we should ever have presented to us so varied and so authoritative an exposition of the laws that governed society in any part of the world in the third millennium before our era. Thanks to the imperishable nature of the materials on which the Babylonians wrote, this seeming miracle has now come to pass, and we are in a fair way to have a much more precise and accurate knowledge of the culture of this ancient people than we are likely ever to possess regarding European nations of two thousand years later. The laws that governed the Greeks and Romans of the earlier period, and the details as to the practicalities of their civilisation, are for the most part preserved to us only through traditions that utterly lack the authenticity of such an original document as this code of Khammurabi. The sands of Egypt have recently given up to us a papyrus roll on which is inscribed the famous treatise on the constitution of Athens by Aristotle; and the eagerness with which this document has been scanned by students of Greek history is in itself an evidence of the paucity of authoritative documents regarding the classical world during this relatively recent period. It is peculiarly gratifying then to be able to go back to so much more remote a period and learn as it were at first hand such interesting details of the laws that governed the social intercourse of these forerunners of the Greeks. The fact that the earliest European civilisation undoubtedly deferred in many ways to this remoter civilisation of the Orient lends additional importance to these wonderful documents from old Babylonia.a

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER VIII. THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS

It is always extremely difficult for a writer of any nationality to appreciate the peculiar genius of another nation, even as regards its political and social history. And when we turn to the question of religion, the difficulty becomes well nigh an impassable barrier. Obviously the effort must be made, but we can never feel too secure in the results; certainly not unless we know the particular bias of the individual interpreter. Perhaps we cannot better illustrate the difficulties in question than by making two short quotations, each of which includes an estimate of Babylonian influence in general, and of its religious influence in particular.

One of these estimates runs thus:

“In spite of the skill and knowledge of the Babylonians, and their wonderful progress in arts and sciences, they had a religion of the lowest and most degrading kind. True insight into natural phenomena was prevented, and progress beyond the surface of things stopped by a religion which had a multitude of gods, which were supposed to bring about in an irregular and capricious manner all the changes in nature and all the misfortunes which happened to the people; thus foresight and medicine were neglected, and unavailing prayers and useless sacrifices offered to propitiate the deities, who were imagined to hold the destiny of the human race in their hands.”

The other estimate is quite different:

“The history of Babylonia has an interest of a wider kind than that of Egypt; from its more intimate connection with the general history of the human race, and from the remarkable influence which its religion, its science, and its civilisation have had on all subsequent human progress. Its religious traditions, carried away by the Israelites who came out from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis xi. 31), have through this wonderful people become the heritage of all mankind, while its science and civilisation, through the medium of the Greeks and Romans, have become the basis of modern research and advancement.”

Now the curious thing is that these contradictory estimates occur in the same book, and only separated from one another by a few pages. They were probably not written by the same man, for the edition we are quoting is one published after the author’s death, and “edited and brought up to date” by another writer. George Smith was the author, A. H. Sayce the editor, and both alike have the highest rank as Assyriologists, and any quotation from either must be considered as having a high degree of authority. Which, then, is right? Had the Babylonians a “religion of the lowest and most[516] degrading kind,” or was it a religion which has had a “remarkable influence upon all subsequent human progress” through having been adopted by the Hebrews, and through them becoming “the heritage of all mankind”?

Or, again, are the two citations less contradictory than they seem, each being a correct statement of a particular point of view? Did the Babylonian religion, which the Hebrews are said to have borrowed, really have elements both of greatness and of degradation, and was it, therefore, capable of being interpreted in one way or the other, according to the particular element for the moment considered? Perhaps this is the fairer view. Possibly these two phases might be found to pertain to every religion whatsoever. In any event, we shall have occasion often to quote contradictory views in attempting to get at the truth about the religions of the various peoples who come before us. And of a certainty we shall sometimes be left in doubt as to the real character of the religion in question. So long as the sects of Christendom cannot agree among themselves as to the correct interpretation of the particular records which form their common basis, we can hardly hope to interpret with full justice the religious contemplations of people of another genius.

The following account of Assyrian religion by Joachim Menant is based upon a study of documents from the library of Asshurbanapal, and, as will be seen, is an exposition of certain details of the subject, rather than an attempt at a comprehensive analysis. Nevertheless, its explicit depiction of these details will perhaps give the reader a clearer idea of the Assyrian religion than could be gained from a more general treatment. As already pointed out, any interpretation of the mysteries of an oriental religion must necessarily, in the present state of our knowledge, leave much to be desired.a

It is rather difficult nowadays to distinguish the link which united science to astrology and astrology to religion. The Assyrio-Chaldean dogma is not formulated in a text by which we may grasp the whole, and thus we are obliged to seek traces of it in fragments of different sources and of different times, without being able to give them the unity they must have had in their complete form; in other words, we cannot reconstruct the Assyrian pantheon as a whole.

The most superficial examination suffices to show that we are in the presence of a very complicated polytheism, but there is no text to explain the hierarchy which must have reigned in the celestial world. At the summit of this hierarchy one can perceive a divinity, one, and at the same time divisible. Dogma proclaims this divinity in certain passages, but when we wish to learn its exact individuality, it eludes us, so that we may only seize the abstraction. We are led to believe in a celestial hierarchy of beings inhabiting a superior world and subordinated to an all-powerful God, who governs gods, world, and men. He is enthroned in spaces inaccessible to us in our condition, and appears only in legends; his power intervenes only when the order of the universe is threatened, as we shall see in the legend of Ishtar, when the goddess of the dwellings of the dead wishes to keep the daughter of Sin in the dark dwelling, where she is so boldly detained.

This all-powerful God does not seem to be accessible to human beings; secondary divinities revolve about him and seem, like him, to be pure spirits. In the practice of the religion one has a glimpse of an assembly of divinities, whose relations with humanity are more tangible. These gods assume more definite form, as a general thing the human one often joined with that of[517] various animals, fish, oxen, or birds. The wings seem to have but a single symbolical signification, to denote beings of a superior order.

These gods have a rather definite hierarchy, twelve of them being known as “great gods.” The one who appears to be the chief varies according to locality and time. The chances of political conquest seem to influence him, and he is changed according to the fortunes of war that give the upper hand to such and such locality where his cult is followed.

At Nineveh, the god which seems to have been the highest in the celestial hierarchy, is Ilu; his character is no further defined and his symbol is often only the abstract representation of the divinity.

In the historical texts of the Assyrian kings we find an enumeration of the great gods who were invoked by the sovereigns of the earth; their number and order is not always constant, but such as they are we can mention: Ilu (Ana), who is often confounded at Nineveh with Asshur; then Bel (Baal); and lastly Anu. These three divinities appear as the reflection of the gods of the superior world, which we have already mentioned, but to which we have been unable to ascribe names. Then follow the gods more particularly associated with the visible world: Sin, the god of the moon; Shamash, god of the sun; Bin (Ramman or Adad), god of the higher regions of the atmosphere, arbitrator of the heavens and earth, the god who presides over tempests.

A series of divinities seems especially given over to the superintendence of the planets: Adar over Saturn, Marduk over Jupiter, Nergal over Mars, Ishtar over Venus, Nabu over Mercury.

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Ishtar seems always to have a peculiar and special individuality, notwithstanding that each of the great gods has a spouse who is often invoked with him, and who seems to complete him. The rôle of the great spouses of the great gods is not well understood; with Ishtar we can see Beltis figure, whose name is transformed and often becomes like that of Ishtar, a collective appellation of all female divinities; those whose names seem to have a more permanent character are Zarpanit, the goddess who particularly represents the fertile principle of the universe, and Tasmit, the goddess of wisdom. All female divinities seem to have direct relations with humanity, but they often disappear in the higher and inaccessible world, and then only reveal themselves through secondary influences. Secondary gods, whose number is infinite, are born of these divine couples; a tablet from the Nineveh library gives us the list of twelve sons of Anu with their attributes; of these sons other divinities are born, but their descent we cannot follow. It is so with other great gods.

At Babylon the divinities are the same, but the hierarchy is different; Bel seems to have replaced Ilu (Ana), and Marduk takes the place of Asshur. It is easy to be seen that these theogonies come from a common source, which is every day becoming more accessible to us, but which we have not yet sufficiently explored to know its exact nature.

The artistic development at which the Chaldeans had arrived from the remotest antiquity, allows us easily to suppose that we ought to discover in the pictured monuments that which the texts have not yet revealed to us. Unfortunately we cannot fix upon the meaning of the figures on the engraved stones until we shall have complete enlightenment from the texts. The significance of a symbol cannot be guessed at; also it is the most we can do if from all these representations we are able to recognise the figures of four or five divinities—Ilu, Nabu, Marduk, Ishtar, and Zarpanit. There is, moreover, a special reason why we should be most cautious in our comparisons; we know that when the Assyrians took possession of a hostile town, they carried away the images of strange divinities, and restored them to their possessors, after inscribing on these images the names of Assyrian gods. Therefore we should not trust too much to an Assyrian inscription to fix on the identification of the image of a divinity, as deeds of this nature might have been repeated in every campaign. It is thus, doubtless, that we may explain the fact that, while in the whole of Mesopotamia the abstract idea of the divinity was mentioned by the name Ilu, it appears on the monuments of the Achæmenidæ as Ormuzd.

The Assyrio-Chaldean cult had a very solemn ritual; we already have a great number of hymns addressed to the principal divinities; and as every month and every day of the month was under the protection of a particular divinity, one may understand that the Assyrio-Chaldean ritual must have had a considerable development. There were hymns dedicated to Nabu, Sin, Shamash, Anuit, to Fire, and to the Elements. Here is a hymn which can give an idea of the lyric poetry of which the library of Nineveh included numerous fragments:

“Lord Illuminator of darkness who penetrates obscurity. The Good God, who uplifts those who are in abjection, who sustains the feeble. The great gods turn their eyes towards thy light. The spirits of the abyss eagerly contemplate thy face. The language of praise is addressed to thee as a single word. The … of their heads seeks the light of the Southern sun. Like a betrothed thou restest full of joy and graciousness. In thy splendour thou attainest the limits of Heaven. Thou art the Standard of[519] this wide World. O God, the men who live afar off contemplate thee and rejoice.”

Religious ceremonies bore a relation to external worship; they all ended in invocation or sacrifice. The cylinder-engraved scenes give us an idea of these ceremonies; we usually see the priest in an attitude of adoration or prayer, sometimes alone, but often before an altar, on which reposes the object of adoration, or that which is going to be sacrificed. The most usual victim is a ram or a kid. The Assyrian kings never began an important expedition without having invoked the gods and held religious ceremonies; after a victory they offered a sacrifice on the borders of their newly conquered states. These sacrifices generally took place in the open air; nevertheless, temples were numerous in Assyria and Chaldea; their traditional form is that of a step-pyramid (ziggurat); every town had one or two temples of this kind under the patronage of one of the divinities of the Assyrian pantheon.

A tablet from the library gives us a list of these different sanctuaries, where the gifts of the faithful multiplied and accumulated until the time when war came to disperse them.

Cosmogony occupies a large place on the tablets of Asshurbanapal’s library. Amongst all these tablets, those which relate to the creation of the world, particularly to the history of the flood, have acquired notoriety. These ancient traditions form a whole which claims the closest attention. Whatever the philological explanations one may accept, there is one dominating matter which gives an incontestable importance to these remains, and this is their relation to the Mosaic statements. It is certain that the fall of Nineveh antedated the Babylonian captivity, and that the Bible in its present form postdates the return from captivity. It is not without interest, therefore, to compare the biblical accounts with a text, which could not have been altered from the day it was buried under the ruins of an Assyrian palace. This is not all; these ancient Assyrian legends are really the translation of a Sumerian text, which Asshurbanapal had copied and translated from the libraries of lower Chaldea, and we know positively that these texts antedate the reign of the ancient Sargon, and are therefore earlier by several centuries than the time when Abraham must have left Chaldea.

It is doubtless not the place here to give way to a discussion on pure philology; we will simply say this: when we make a mistake in translating a hymn addressed to the god Sin, and apply it to quite another divinity of the Assyrian pantheon, it is a deplorable mistake; but such an error, were it the most gross, would have no influence on our present prejudices. It is otherwise if we refer to a text which can influence our intimate beliefs, be it to fortify them, combat them, or explain their origin. In England and other protestant countries the discoveries of George Smith acquired a tremendous notoriety, and his translations are accepted with an eagerness and confidence which a severe criticism has not justified. In France these discoveries aroused less curiosity from the first, and Assyriologists who study legendary texts have done so with a dispassionateness which is all the more conducive to scientific and correct historic results.

Nevertheless, from these sources and authorities, translations have passed into elementary books, where it has been sought to use them in the support of preconceived ideas, often by altering their true meaning. We cannot set ourselves too strongly against such proceedings. It is surely not a new principle, that disinterested science must with perfect impartiality scrutinise all books, legends, and documents which claim the attention of the human mind.

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The history of the creation comprises a collection of several tablets, of which the text was published in 1875, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology. This text includes six fragments forming part of a series of tablets designated in Assyria under the title of “Enuva” (i.e., Formerly).b

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION

Since George Smith first published the tablets various other fragments have been discovered, the most important new discovery, perhaps, being made by Mr. L. W. Kingj of a tablet containing a reference to the creation of man. He found that the tablets belonging to the series are seven in number, and has published all the hitherto known material in his Seven Tablets of Creation. The following extracts are taken from his translation:

Here follow three tablets telling of the revolt of Tiamat and her defeat, which will be spoken of later on.

The fifth tablet begins:

The rest of the tablet is rather badly mutilated. The sixth begins:

The rest of the tablet is too fragmentary for translation. The seventh contains the fifty titles of Marduk.

Besides these seven tablets there are some which contain other accounts of the creation. One of these refers to the creation of cattle and the beasts of the field.a

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The rest is too mutilated for comprehension of anything besides single words.

THE BABYLONIAN RELIGION

The fact that these tablets as well as so many others of Babylonian origin were found in an Assyrian library, shows that the Assyrians took their religion like the rest of their culture from the Babylonians. Indeed the Assyrian myths, religious doctrines, and observances are so similar to those of the mother-country that in speaking of Babylonian religion the Assyrian is usually to be understood as well. The Babylonian religion in turn was largely influenced by the Summerian which was an astral religion. The names of the gods are found written with the same ideograms although they were doubtless pronounced differently. Many of the texts are found written in Summerian with interlinear Assyrian translations.

Babylonian religion as we first see it is in the form of local cults. Each city with its surrounding district had its own god, whose authority was supreme. Thus Anu was worshipped in Erech, Bel in Nippur, Ea in Eridu, Sin in Uru, Shamash in Larsa and Sippar. When these cities began to be welded together into political systems, the gods also were put together into an organised pantheon in which political situations influenced the relations the gods were made to bear to each other. Thus when Babylon became the capital of the empire its special god, Marduk, became leader among the gods.

A second characteristic feature of the Babylonian religion is that it is based on natural phenomena. The myths are nature myths. The story of the original creation was in a way the prototype of what happened every year. The earth is covered with water from the winter rains (state of chaos). The spring sun (Marduk) fights with and overcomes the water (Tiamat); the earth appears, green things of all kinds and life are produced. The story of the flood may have referred to the annual inundation, with perhaps the added element of severe winds and a tidal wave from the south. Such inundations have occurred in historic times. Ishtar’s descent into the lower world marks the autumn when everything is dry and has been burned up by the fierce summer sun. Ishtar goes to seek the water of life, which in the Babylonian world was a most appropriate metaphor, because water actually was the life of the country. Without it the land was arid and desolate as to-day; with it, its luxuriant vegetation caused the region about Babylon to be called the garden of the gods (Karaduniash).

The creation legend as we have it must have been written after the consolidation of the empire with Babylon as its capital, because in the story Marduk, although one of the younger gods, is made the champion and leader of the others. The tablets on which the legend is contained now usually go by the name of enuma elish, “when above,” from the opening words. The opening lines of the story relating the creation of the gods, and the latter part telling of the creation of animals and man, we have already seen. The version of creation given here is practically the one Berosus gives of the Babylonians, which is found in Eusebius and which he quotes from Polyhistor (see Appendix A).

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In the beginning was chaos, consisting of a watery mass. Only two beings existed—Apsu, the Deep, and Tiamat, the universal mother. These two represent the two formative elements from whose union the gods were created. First Lakhmu and Lakhamu were born, then Anshar and Kishar, and after a long interval the other great gods. Tiamat, after having brought forth the gods, conceived a hatred for them and created a large number of monsters to aid her in a battle against them and gave the command to her son Kingu. She bore: “giant snakes, sharp as to teeth, and merciless—with poison she filled their bodies as with blood.” Anshar sends his son Anu against Tiamat, but he is afraid to face her. After Ea also has been sent in vain, Marduk offers to take up the fight, but first demands to be recognised by the other gods as their champion. Anshar summons the great gods to a feast, informs them of all that has taken place, and calls on them to appoint Marduk as their defender. The gods do so and hail him with the following words (the translation of the Assyrian texts is based upon that of Jensenh in his Cosmologie der Babylonier):

To test his powers the gods place a garment before Marduk and tell him to bid it disappear and come back again at his word. When he has accomplished this prodigy the gods are pleased and exclaim “Marduk is king.” The avenger after equipping himself for the fray goes out to meet Tiamat and her host, taking with him his thunderbolt, spear, and net; he is followed by seven winds, which he has created. We take up the story again at the point where Marduk challenges Tiamat to battle:

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After Marduk had dealt with the minor rebels

The rest of the legend deals with the creation and has been mentioned elsewhere. Professor Gunkeli (in his Schöpfung und Chaos) in speaking of this myth says that Tiamat’s offspring, the monsters of the sea, are the stars in the constellations of the zodiac. The stars are the children of the night. Marduk is the spring sun, who fights with the waters, finally subdues them, and brings forth vegetation. This story of Marduk and his fight with the dragon is sometimes identified with the Christ story. The Babylonians also appear to have celebrated a festival at the new year, when the sun turned back from the equator and left the constellation of the water-man. This may be said to mark the birth of spring. Three months later when the god has grown sufficiently strong he fights with the waters (Tiamat Sin) and conquers.

The Babylonians pictured the earth as a cone-shaped mountain surrounded by water. Over this was stretched the dome of heaven behind which was the heavenly ocean and the home of the gods. In the dome were two gates through which Shamash the sun-god passed out in the morning and entered at night. The moon and stars were within the dome, and did not pass through it as did the sun. Underneath the thick crust of the earth’s surface the space was all filled with water, and within the crust was Arallu, the home of the dead and land of “no return.” This was supposed to be surrounded by seven walls. Although the real home of the gods was beyond the dome of heaven, they usually lived on the earth and had their council-chamber on the mountain of sunrise, near the gate through which Shamash came out in the morning.

The Babylonian gods are very human. They are born, live, love, fight, and even die, like the people on the earth. The conception is wholly materialistic. Alfred Jeremiask says of this religion: “A practical streak runs through the religion of the inhabitants of the Euphrates valley. Their gods are gods of the living; they are in active intercourse with them as helpers in every action, as rescuers from all evil. The whole religious interest centres on the necessities of this world. There is no room for the anxious reflection and philosophising as to the whence, and whither of the soul, which is so characteristic of the Egyptians. With death comes an end of strength and life, of hope and comfort. Hence their religion as such has little to do with conceptions of another world.”

The names of the chief gods have been already mentioned. Besides the ilani rabuti, the great gods, there were a hosts of smaller ones, and a large number of good and evil spirits. Sickness and disease were supposed to be brought by demons, the children of the under-world who performed the bidding of Allatu and Nergal, the rulers over hades. Allatu’s chief messenger was Namtar, the demon of pestilence. The Annunaki likewise did her errands of destruction. The Babylonians lived in constant terror of offending some of these divinities, and a large part of their literature was devoted to magical formulas and prayers for aid and protection. Before undertaking any deed it was customary to find out whether or not the omens were favourable. Certain days were particularly unlucky and on them nothing could be done. The 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of every month were among the unlucky ones. The later Jewish sabbath is thus seen to have been originally[524] an unlucky day rather than a holy day. Hugo Winckler has suggested an ingenious theory for the fact that thirteen has always been considered an unlucky number. In order to make the Babylonian calendrical system of lunar months agree with the solar year, it was necessary to insert an extra month. This thirteenth month was regarded as being in the way and disturbing calculations. So thirteen came to be regarded as a superfluous, unlucky number. Another sign of the zodiac was appointed for this extra month, and this was the sign of the raven.

A great many of the tablets which have been excavated contain omens. Omens were drawn from dreams, from the conjunction of stars and planets, from earthquakes, eclipses, and in short from all natural phenomena. Connected with this was the magical literature, the hymns, and penitential psalms. If all a man’s precautions had been in vain and disease had come upon him, there were magical formulas which might rescue him from his misery, certain prayers or hymns he might recite. Every Babylonian had his own protecting god and goddess, to whose care he was perhaps committed at birth, but the intervention of a priest was necessary to appease the god. The following prayer, from a tablet used as prayer-book for the use of priest and penitent, is taken from King’sc Babylonian Religion and Mythology:

To ascertain why the evil had come upon the man, questions like the following were asked, some of which show an advanced moral code:

On one old tablet which has a Summerian interlinear translation the stricken man turns to Marduk as an intercessor:

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A very pessimistic view of life is shown by the following complaint of a sick man quoted by Jeremias: “The day is sighing, the night a flood of tears; weeping is the month and misery the year.”

We have already seen specimens of Babylonian hymnology. The following hymn to Sin, as translated from Shrader’sm work on cuneiform inscriptions, shows real religious fervour:

THE EPIC OF GILGAMISH

The close relation existing between mythology and religion hardly needs to be pointed out. The great epic of the Babylonians and Assyrians—that of Gilgamish—is of special interest to us since it contains the Babylonian story of the flood. The hero’s name was formerly read as Izdubar, as the following quotation from Jeremiasn in his Izdubar-Nimrod shows.a

The epic, which was preserved in the royal library of Nineveh in the seventh century as a precious national possession, gives us a glimpse into the Babylonian history of a remote past. The poem deals principally with “kings who ruled the land in by-gone times,” and with a city “which was old” at the time of the flood, and the epic itself reaches back into very ancient times. Its scene is laid among cities in the Euphrates district: Uruk (Erech), Nippur, the “city of ships,” Sherippak and Babylon. The geographical horizon extends beyond these cities to the mountain Nisir, east of the Tigris, and southwards, beyond the Mashu mountain land, clear into the Persian Gulf. The central point of interest is the city Uruk, called Uruk supuri, “the well guarded.” Among the aristocracy of this city Izdubar makes himself distinguished, being “perfect in power, like a mountain ox, excelling the heroes in might.” He overcomes the jealousy of his fellow citizens and establishes an indigenous kingdom, namely by conquering the tyrant Khumbaba, who is shown by his name to be of Elamite descent. The attempt has been made to identify this historical background with the national uprising of Babylonia, which, according to Berosus, brought about the downfall of[526] an Elamite dynasty ruling 2450-2250 B.C. That the tradition really did reach back to this age is proved by Babylonian seal-cylinders of the oldest kings, which unquestionably reproduce scenes from the epic, perhaps also the connection of the epic with certain constellations of the zodiac.

More important than the historical is the mythological background. Since Babylonian religion did not belong to the “aristocracy of book religions,” it is difficult to form a system from the abundance of religious literature, the views of which have been influenced by varying popular opinion. Hence the portrayal of the divine world as found in a finished epic is the more important. As in the inscription of King Nabunaid, written 2,000 years later, so here we find the two great divine triads, Anu, Bel, Ea, who represent three parts of the world according to Babylonian ideas (heaven, earth, ocean), and Shamash, Sin, Ishtar, who represent the chief heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, Venus).

The relations between gods and men is pictured in a naïve childlike fashion, as in Homer. Ishtar tries to win the love of the hero Izdubar. Shamash establishes friendship between the hero and Eabani, the three great gods Anu, Bel, Ea whisper secrets into his ear. As Ishtar at one time mounts from out the city to the heaven of her father Bel, so the gods out of fear of the rising flood “crouch down like dogs at the portals of heaven”; they flock like flies around the sacrifice and “smell the good smell.”

One remarkable feature of the epic should be noticed here, namely, the importance attached to dreams. The whole action is set in motion by countless dreams, by means of which the gods show men the future and give them council. This view is characteristic of Babylonian and Assyrian religion. The ancient Babylonian king Gudea is shown the outline of the temple building in a dream. Asshurbanapal on his coming to the throne receives an address of encouragement from the priestly class, which is based on a dream of his grandfather Sennacherib, and in his campaigns inspiring dreams are sent to his soldiers from the goddess of war.n

Nothing definite is known as to the time of the composition of this epic. We do not know if the copy in Asshurbanapal’s library was made from a Babylonian original or not. It is not probable that the whole was written at one time or by one author.

The Gilgamish epic comprises twelve tablets. These are mutilated and broken in places leaving gaps in the story, but they are sufficiently well preserved to permit us to follow the main thread of the argument. When the scene opens the city of Erech is suffering under the severe misfortune of a protracted siege. The inhabitants are in distress and the gods do nothing to help them. This siege lasts for three years, during which time the gates of the city remain closed. Then Gilgamish appears, whether as conqueror or deliverer the mutilated condition of the tablet leaves in doubt. He was probably the former, since his rule is very severe and the people complain of his tyrannical acts. In their distress they appeal to the goddess Aruru, who is elsewhere associated with Marduk in the creation of mankind, to make a person who shall rival Gilgamish in strength and power. Aruru accordingly creates Ea-bani, a creature whose whole body is covered with long hair like a woman’s. The upper part of his body is like a man but his legs are those of a beast. This strange being lives among the beasts of the field, eating and drinking with them.

Gilgamish fearing that Ea-bani will be sent by the gods against him sends out a man called the hunter to catch and bring him to Erech. The hunter lies in wait for him three days, but on account of his great strength is afraid[527] to attack him and returns to the city. Gilgamish then sends a harlot from the temple with the hunter, to tempt Ea-bani. This plan is successful. Ea-bani forsakes his cattle out of love for Achat, the harlot, and is persuaded by her to return to Erech and meet Gilgamish. One thinks involuntarily here of the story of Adam and Eve. There also it is a woman who tempts man and leads him to civilisation.

Ea-bani would like to match his strength with Gilgamish, but he is warned in a dream not to do so. Gilgamish is also told in a dream of Ea-bani’s coming, and the goddess to whom he appeals for interpretation of his dream advises him to make friends with the approaching hero. The intervention of Shamash, the sun-god, however, is necessary to persuade Ea-bani to become a companion and friend to Gilgamish.

The two heroes then proceed against the Elamite tyrant, Khumbaba. The epic tells of the long, hard road they have to follow, of their terror, and of the wonderful cedar grove in which the fortress of Khumbaba is placed. Gilgamish has several encouraging dreams to cheer them on, and they eventually succeed in killing the tyrant. On their return Gilgamish has the misfortune to incur Ishtar’s displeasure. The goddess sues for his love and invites him to become her husband. He, however, refuses her favour, even reproaching her for her cruel treatment of her former lovers, Tammuz among them, all of whom she has forsaken and destroyed. Ishtar in her rage at being repulsed hastens to her father, Anu, who creates a divine bull to attack Gilgamish. The latter, however, with Ea-bani’s help succeeds in conquering the bull. He sacrifices his magnificent horns to Shamash and proudly boasts that he will conquer Ishtar as well as the bull. But here his success is at an end. Ea-bani dies, probably stricken by Ishtar, and Gilgamish himself is afflicted by her with a dreadful disease, which strikes terror to his heart at the thought that he must die like his friend.

Gilgamish then determines to seek Sit-napishtim and beseech his help to rescue him from disease and death. After various experiences he comes to the mountain Mashu, the sunset mountain, whose gates are guarded by scorpion men. They let him enter and he journeys for twenty-four hours in intense darkness before he emerges into the sunlight and passes by a tree and grove with precious stones for fruit. He then comes to the sea coast, ruled over by a princess Sabitum. She advises him to seek out Arad-Ea, the former pilot of Sit-napishtim, who may possibly carry him across the waters. Arad-Ea consents, builds a boat with the aid of Gilgamish and they set out together. The most difficult part of the voyage is the journey across the “waters of death.” The two finally reach the island home of Sit-napishtim who, at Gilgamish’s request, tells the story of his escape from the flood (as translated from Jeremiasn):

The lines here are too mutilated to make much meaning. According to some interpretations Sit-napishtim assures his fellow-citizens of coming prosperity so that they have no misgivings as to his leaving them; others, on the contrary, indicate that Sit-napishtim made no secret of the coming deluge. Sit-napishtim then relates how he built the ship, gives its dimensions, and tells what he put into it. He continues (Jeremias’n translation):

Ramman floods the land, the tempest rages for a whole day, a strong wind blows the water like mountains upon the people.

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Ishtar complains that her offspring have become like fish spawn and the gods weep with her. After six days, however, the storm abates, the sea becomes quiet. Sit-napishtim looks out of the window and weeps at the sight that meets his gaze. Mankind is turned to clay, the world is all sea. After twelve days land appears, and the ship sticks fast on the top of Mount Nisit, where it remains for six days.

When Ishtar arrives she bitterly accuses Bel for having destroyed mankind and refuses to let him approach the sacrifice. Bel on his part is angry that any man whatever has escaped. Ea interposes, rebukes Bel for his deed, and tells him that in the future some other device shall be used to punish mankind. Bel accepts the censure and himself leads Sit-napishtim and his wife out of the ship and blesses them. They are then transported to an island at the “mouth of the streams” where they are to live forever.

After listening to this story Gilgamish is cured of his disease by Sit-napishtim who also tells him of a plant which has the power to prolong life. Gilgamish sets out with Arad-Ea to find it, and their search is indeed successful; but later on in the journey a demon steals the plant, and Gilgamish returns sorrowfully home. Here he continues to mourn for his lost friend Ea-bani. In his desire to see him again he appeals in turn to Bel, Sin, and Ea to assist him, but they are powerless to help him. It is Nergal, god of the dead, who grants his request and “opened the earth, let the spirit of Ea-bani come out of the earth like a breath of wind.” When asked to describe the under-world Ea-bani at first answers, “I cannot tell you, my friend, I cannot tell you,” then he bids him sit down and weep while he gives him a gloomy account of the place, which closes with the following lines (Jeremias’ translation):

This is the end of the epic. It has been suggested that the whole forms a solar myth and is divided into twelve parts to correspond to the twelve months. According to this theory the sixth tablet, relating to Ishtar, and her treatment of Tammuz and her other lovers, corresponds to the sixth month. It is the month when everything seems dry and dead after the hot summer sun, and in this month the festival of Tammuz was celebrated, as a characteristic of which was the weeping for Tammuz related in Ezekiel viii. 14.[530] The seventh tablet speaking of Gilgamish’s illness would thus correspond to the seventh month, the one following the summer solstice, when the power of nature seems to grow less, and this was attributed to a disease of the sun.

ISHTAR’S DESCENT INTO HADES

This idea is brought out more fully in the legend of Ishtar’s descent into the under world. It is possible that the story used to be recited in connection with the festival of Tammuz just mentioned. Ishtar is pictured as descending into the lower realms, probably in search of her young husband. The picture it gives us of the conception the Babylonians had of life after death is very valuable. The poem begins:

The porter then informs Allatu that her sister Ishtar stands at the door. The goddess is displeased at the news but bids the porter open the door and treat her according to the “ancient laws.” These demanded that she should lose some part of her apparel at each of the seven gates of the under-world until she stood naked before the throne of its goddess. At the first gate the porter takes away her crown and she asks: “Why, O porter, dost thou take the great crown from my head!” He answers: “Enter, O lady, for these are the commands of the mistress of the world.” At each gate Ishtar remonstrates at having her ornaments taken from her, and each time the porter returns the same answer.

When Ishtar comes before Allatu, the latter commands her messenger Namtar to smite the goddess with disease in all parts of her body. But while Ishtar is being detained in the lower world, all life has stopped on the earth’s surface. The gods demand her release. A being is specially created to bring her back. The rest of the story and the meaning of this and the flood myth is told by C. P. Tieleo as follows:a

The story of Ishtar’s descent into hades is unmistakably a nature myth, which describes in picturesque fashion her descent into the under-world to seek the springs of living water, probably the central force of light and heat in the world. When she is imprisoned there by Allatu, the goddess of death and of the shadow world, and even visited with all sorts of diseases, all growth and generation stand still in the world, so that the gods take council[531] and decide to demand her release. Ea accordingly creates a wonderful being a kind of priest, called “his light shineth,” who is to seek out the fountain of life, and whom Allatu cannot withstand, however much she may scold and curse. The goddess is set free, returns to the upper world and brings her dead lover Tammuz back to life by sprinkling him with the water of immortality. This myth is not cosmological nor ethical, but has already become a pure anthropomorphic narration, the physical basis for certain episodes and details of which is often not clear, and which has a tendency to strengthen belief in immortality. The account of the flood also, which we have in several versions and which was itself put together out of various parts, some of them heterogeneous, betrays the fact that it was put together by a polytheist and originated in a nature myth. But the nature myths as such lie already so far behind the author, there is such a naïve humour in the way the gods are represented, everything happens in such a human fashion—one needs only to think of Ishtar’s complaint that she has created men but no brood of fishes, of the sly excuse with which Ea excuses himself to Bel for having rescued his favourite from the destruction planned by the latter, one needs only to hear how Bel is preached at by the wise Ea for his unreasonable and blind passion, and how the great Ishtar declares him to have forfeited his share of the sacrifice, and then see how he silently acknowledges his wrong by himself accompanying the man over whose rescue he had become so excited, and raising him with his family to a place among the gods—one needs only to think of all this to see that the narrator made use of the mythological material only to describe the fall of sinful humanity and at the same time to remind his hearers that the gods always have means at their command, such as hunger, pestilence, and wild beasts, to punish the evil-doer.o

The Babylonian view of life after death was particularly gloomy. There was no hope of anything better. The highest state of happiness pictured was to lie on a couch and drink clear water; even for the pious it was a place of gloom. And there was no possibility of escaping from it. Sit-napishtim tells Gilgamish in this connection that death must come to all (we translate again from the version of Jeremiasn):

We have seen the legend telling of a visit to the lower world; there are two which tell of visits to heaven. One is in connection with Etana. In Asshurbanapal’s library were a series of tablets containing the Etana legend. One portion of the story tells how Shamash helped Etana to find a plant which would help his wife in child-birth. Another narrates how Etana mounted to heaven on the back of an eagle. They pause at different stages to look at the earth beneath them. At the first stop: “The earth appears like a mountain, the sea has become a pool.” They go further and the eagle again calls to Etana to look at the earth. This time the sea looks like a belt around the earth. The next time he looks the sea has become a mere gardener’s ditch. After reaching the gate of Anu, Bel, and Ea, the eagle wants to go still further and persuades Etana to accompany him to Ishta[532]r’s abode. They fly until the earth appears a mere “garden bed,” but here the rash attempt of the eagle to reach the highest regions appears to be punished. The two are hurled down from heaven upon the earth. Another part of the legend tells of a deceit practised upon the eagle by the serpent, aided by Shamash, in which the eagle dies a miserable death.

The second story of a visit to heaven is found in the legend of Adapa. This legend was on one of the tablets found at Tel Amarna. Adapa is a son of the god Ea, and is represented as serving in his temple. One day as he is fishing in the sea the south wind overturns his boat. Adapa then fights with the south wind and succeeds in breaking its wings so that it does not blow for seven days. At the end of this time Anu, in heaven, becomes aware that the south wind has not been blowing and inquires the reason. When told, he becomes very angry that anyone should have had the audacity to interfere with any of his creatures. He accordingly sends for Adapa to appear before him. Ea gives his son advice as to his conduct, telling him how to secure the good favour of the two porters at the gate, one of whom is Tammuz. He tells him further: “When thou comest before Anu, they will offer thee food of death—do not eat. Water of death they will offer thee—do not drink. They will offer thee a garment—put it on. They will offer thee oil—anoint thyself.” Adapa then reaches heaven, and everything happens as Ea has told him. Only the food and water which are offered him are of life not of death, and thus Adapa loses his chances of eternal life. Anu looks at him in amazement and exclaims: “O Adapa, why didst thou not eat and drink? Now thou canst not live.” Here, as in the case of Adam in the biblical story, whose name by the way may possibly be identical with Adapa, we see that a deceit was practised on man. In each case he is told that the food and water of life will bring him death, although the Babylonian story differs from the biblical in that the former freely and gladly accords man knowledge, as represented by the clothing and oil for anointment, which may be regarded as symbols of civilisation.

In the Euphrates valley religion was very closely associated with the actual life of the nation. The temples were storehouses and banking establishments; the priests were lawyers and scribes. Every historical inscription contains a reference to the gods. Victory was due to their intervention. Nothing was conceived without them. Their festivals were the great events of the year. The German excavating society has recently brought to light the old procession street between Babylon and Borsippa over which the image of the god Nabu used to be carried on his annual visit to Marduk at Babylon. This street was decorated with glazed, coloured tiles, representing a stately procession of lions and other beasts, which show a high grade of artistic talent.

The Babylonian religion shows its development plainly. In its earliest phase we have the belief in a great many spirits and demons, who could be controlled by magic. Then comes the period of local cults followed by the organised pantheon, in which we see faint signs of a conception of one god manifested in many forms.a

To sum up in the words of Tiele: From all that has been said it will be seen that the religion of the Babylonians had at an early date attained a comparatively high stage of development. It had not yet crossed the boundary of monotheism but remained a theocratic, monarchical polytheism; nevertheless it came very near that boundary. The gods of mythology were already treated with great freedom, and the disgust which some of their[533] deeds called forth was not disguised. A comparatively pure and lofty conception of the highest divinity had already been developed, even if it was called upon by different names. However much superficiality and formality, however many superstitions and magical customs may have been connected with the divine worship, it was yet not lacking in deep religious feeling and moral earnestness, which is shown particularly in the penitential psalms.o

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CHAPTER IX. BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CULTURE

Of all the revelations regarding the Mesopotamian civilisation which the researches of Botta and Layard and their followers have brought to light, none perhaps are more interesting than those that showed the position which art had attained in those far-off and forgotten times. It had all along been remembered that powerful political empires had risen and fallen here, however vaguely the details of the history may have been preserved. It was recalled, too, that these peoples possessed religions with the same fundamental elements as the Jewish creeds; but that they had developed an artistic spirit and artistic craftsmanship far beyond that of any other people of their time, had been entirely forgotten. Yet, as we have seen, the most striking and conspicuous of the monuments restored by the explorations were works of art. We have obtained many glimpses of these in the preceding pages, and it will not be necessary here to treat them in very great detail; indeed, it would be quite impossible to do so within the necessary bounds of space. Our concern is with the historic relations of the Mesopotamian art development rather than with the details of the art itself. Nevertheless, something more than incidental references will be made to some features of the subject.a

The origin of Babylonian-Assyrian civilisation is lost in the darkness of prehistoric times, like that of the Egyptians and Chinese. We shall see that even their oldest monuments display a high grade of artistic ability and presuppose a long development. The texts on the oldest monuments are already written in cuneiform; the picture writing in which this must have originated was already out of use, which shows a great progress in civilisation. As to the origin of this culture various suppositions have been made. According to the one which has made most headway, it was borrowed by the Babylonians from a non-Semitic race who inhabited the country before them, and then spread gradually from the Persian Gulf, where it originated or whither it was brought from without, towards the north.

It is pure supposition to say that civilisation in Babylonia started out from the shores of the Persian Gulf and spread from there towards the north, but it is a supposition which has a high degree of probability. In this direction points the old legend of the Babylonians, as Berossus relates it, which describes the origin of civilisation—the legend of the divine fish-man Oannes, who came up in the morning from the Erythræan Sea, instructed the inhabitants of Chaldea, who were still living like animals, in the arts and sciences, and then in the evening disappeared again under the waves. This fish-god has long since been recognised as the god who is so frequently depicted on Babylonian and Assyrian monuments, and it can now hardly be longer doubted that he, the god of the waters, or rather the source of light[535] and fire in the waters, is the god Ea. This god with his circle is without doubt indigenous to southern Chaldea. The oldest and most important centre of his cult is Eridu, situated close to the sea. His son Marduk, and the god connected with him whom the Semites call Nabu, is especially honoured on the islands and coast of the Persian Gulf. Thus if legend traces the culture of the Chaldeans from the instruction of this god, this is the origin of the tradition that his worshippers, who must have been mariners and dwellers on the sea coast, introduced this civilisation into Chaldea.

In agreement with this is the fact that the decrees of Ea and the magic formulæ of Eridu, his chief city situated near the sea, are repeatedly designated as being very holy and powerful, and as very ancient; also that the oldest sayings and traditions which are known to us in the Gisdubas (Gilgamesh) epic, are located precisely in places on the sea coast or not far distant from it. These were also the centres of powerful states, as also of the kingdom of Ur, and the oldest monuments of Chaldean civilisation which have yet become known to us were found in southern Babylonia at Telloh.

However, wherever its origin may have been, the great age of Babylonian culture, of which the Assyrian is only a later branch, stands beyond doubt. The cylinders of Sargon I as well as the statues found at Telloh show a high grade of development and presuppose an art which already has a long past behind it. That the Egyptian culture is younger and even derived from the Babylonian, and that the latter is thus the oldest in the world, and at the same time was the mother of all other civilisations of antiquity, as has been claimed (Hommel), can naturally not be proved and is still doubtful; but it is not impossible. And the most remarkable fact is, that at least the plastic art could never again reach the heights it had already attained in such a gray antiquity.

This does not mean to imply that the Babylonians did not further develop the civilisation, the elements of which they had received from their predecessors. They assimilated it and developed it independently; it may even be assumed that they improved on it in more than one respect, and applied it to higher ends. They also introduced into it much that was peculiar to them. How far this was the case—what with them was borrowed and what original, cannot yet be determined in detail. At any rate we are not justified in attributing to their non-Semitic teachers, as often happens, everything barbaric, cruel, and repulsive that still characterises their customs, nor all the superstitions still connected with their religion.

The original inhabitants excelled the Semites in artistic spirit and ability, perhaps also as traders and mariners, and the latter probably imitated the former, but seldom reached them and never surpassed them. The Semites, on the other hand, put more depth and earnestness into their religious life; energetically carried out the monarchic principle in this, as also in the life of the state; simplified the writing; enriched the literature, which was thus rendered more practical, by highly remarkable epic narrations, especially with epic poems, and even made an attempt to write history. Furthermore, by the organisation of a capable army, by the warlike talents of their kings and generals, as also by their unbending character and persevering will, they established states which endured the most violent upheavals and changes, and ruled all their neighbours for centuries. If they were behind their predecessors in some points, they far surpassed them in others. The conception that one people takes on the culture of another, quite as one puts on a borrowed dress, is just as foolish as the conception that a nation relinquishes its own individuality and originality as soon as it learns something from another.[536] The Greeks of whom it has now been proved that they owed much to oriental peoples, the Persians of whom everyone knows that they borrowed most of their civilisation from Babylon, prove the contrary. The people who brought its culture to the southern coasts of Babylonia and probably also to the coasts of Elan and communicated it to the still uncultured races living there, seems to have belonged to that peaceful, commercial race which the Hebrews designated as the “sons of Kush,” which was not unlike the Phœnicians and was placed in the same category; a race which, while jealous of its independence, was not aggressive, although inclined to colonisation and to making distant journeys. These dwellers on the coasts, together with the inland tribes, were then conquered by the Semites, perhaps after long battles. If, however, they became in this way, as always, the teachers of their conquerors, the culture which grew under their influence was none the less a creation, and thus the inalienable property of the Babylonians.

LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

How high a state of civilisation the Babylonians had reached is shown by the fact that the invention of writing was a long-accomplished fact with them. The oldest inscriptions known to us, and which certainly date as far back as 4000 B.C., are already written in a species of character which from similarity to the second Egyptian style of writing has been called hieratic, and it has been proved that this hieratic style of writing has been evolved from older hieroglyphics, long since fallen into disuse.

It is not known whether any other material than stone or clay was used to write upon, and whether in such case syllabic writing was used or not. It has been surmised that the Babylonians and Assyrians also used, and perhaps exclusively at first, papyrus, leather, and other soft materials to write upon, and engraved upon stone or clay only such matter as they wished to preserve. This is not improbable, even though we do not possess any such manuscripts. For as a matter of course the first named materials could not withstand the Babylonian climate as well as the Egyptian, and only the last named are proof against fire and water. It is a fact, however, that the bas-reliefs show the scribes recording the number of the slain on soft material, probably leather, as well as upon hard tablets. Whether they also wrote books or letters on papyrus or leather has not been definitely established.

However much the writing of the Babylonians and Assyrians may have been an inheritance from very ancient times, and how much they may be indebted to the early Chaldeans for the single form and the structure of the whole system, the cuneiform writing in which they represented their language was their own invention in more than one respect, since they did not thoughtlessly use what was ready to hand, but modified and altered it with deliberation.

Writing was also used by the Babylonians and Assyrians for purely literary purposes. The narratives, legends, or poems were inscribed on tablets of clay, and if in case of a work of greater size, the two sides covered with microscopic characters did not suffice, a series of such was used, which were clearly designated and numbered, so that they were in fact leaves of a book. Generally the title of the whole, as usual with the Hebrews, the first words and the first words of the following tablet were inscribed on every tablet. This literature even if limited to the productions of the imagination, is comparatively abundant. Although in this respect it may not equal the literature of some races still living, such as the[537] Chinese, Arabian, Persian, and Indian, nor that of the ancient times of Greece and India, which in the last named country grows as luxuriantly as its vegetation, yet on the other hand, it excels in this respect that of the other Semitic races, the Hebrews not excepted. This is proved not only by the writings so far discovered but also by the catalogues of books in Babylonian libraries or of similar works elsewhere. However, enough has been brought to light, and in a fair state of preservation, to enable us to form an opinion of the literary talent of the Babylonians, and to prove to us what great varieties of it they cultivated.

The Assyrians stand, in a literary sense, in about the same relation to the Babylonians as the Romans to the Greeks, disciples who never equalled their masters, although as far as can be seen, even relatively considered, Roman literature stands higher in relation to Greek than Assyrian stands in relation to Babylonian. The tendency of the Assyrians was warlike, and directed to practical ideas: to found a mighty empire, and to maintain their supremacy was the end for which they strove. Therefore they were more interested in history than in creations of the imagination; purely literary work had little charm for them. Only much later, a desire is awakened in them to become acquainted with the productions of the Babylonians in this field, and to acquire as much as possible of it for themselves. And perhaps even here interest in the ancient religions and national traditions played a greater rôle than love for poetry.

The Assyrians seem to have had more taste for what may be designated the science of the period, than for literature. Here also, they were following the lead of the Babylonians, and accomplished little beyond taking possession of the treasures of the Babylonian libraries. The prestige which attached to the Babylonians in antiquity as the earliest cultivators of science is well known, although some thought that they had borrowed it from the Egyptians. Without doubt they reached the greatest eminence in antiquity in the knowledge of astronomy. Kalisthenes sent Aristotle astronomical observations from Babylon, which, according to the most moderate statement,[538] reach back to 1903 before Alexander, i.e., 2324 B.C.; and there is nothing improbable in this. The number of eclipses mentioned on the astronomical tablets would lead to a conclusion that there was an even longer period of recorded calculations. It may be that the Ziggurat of the temples, which originally had a religious significance, might, in Assyria at least, have been used as observatories. It has even been surmised that the Babylonians had some sort of a telescope, and this surmise rests upon the finding of a lens in the ruins, and upon the fact that they were acquainted with the planet Saturn, which is invisible to the naked eye; but this doss not seem probable. One thing is certain, they gave names to the constellations, especially to the signs of the Zodiac, which have in part remained in use. They were acquainted with five planets, and distinguished them very exactly from the other heavenly bodies. They observed, and with great accuracy, the eclipses of the sun and moon, perhaps also the sun spots, the comets, the orbit of Venus, and the position of the Polar star; but they had some very childish ideas about the causes of eclipses and the character of the other heavenly phenomena. Naturally the Milky Way did not escape their observation. They even calculated the regular recurrence of eclipses of the moon as well as its phases.

A few of the mathematical tablets extant prove that they had made great progress in arithmetic and higher mathematics, so indispensable to the study of astronomy. The prevalent system was the sexagesimal, with the 60 as the unit, but the decimal system seems to have been known and used. However in spite of the recognition of the high value of these researches, they hardly deserve the name of science. These researches were certainly not undertaken from a love of science. The prime object, no doubt, was to discover the will of the gods in regard to the future. The science of mathematics itself was made subservient to the art of divination. Astronomy was a secondary object, astrology the principal one. Knowledge was sought of what must happen when there should be a recurrence of certain phases of stars and heavenly bodies. All observations of planets, comets, and other stars, of eclipses and other phenomena, were immediately connected with occurrences on earth, which at some former time had fallen in conjunction with them and consequently must be expected again.

No more were other branches of science besides astronomy cultivated for their own sakes. Their science of medicine was based almost entirely upon magic, and appears to have stood on a lower plane than that of the Egyptians, at least in so far as the still existing inscriptions will permit us to judge. They indeed used as did the Vedic Indians external and internal remedies, but they probably regarded them as charms; whatever progress they may have made in the science of medicine, the records of it in the ancient inscriptions prove that it was somewhat less than what we know of the Vedic physicians and their cures. Thus it is rather an exaggeration to speak of physical, geographical, grammatical, and mythological writings of the Babylonians and Assyrians, unless the myths and legends belonging to literature already discussed are meant.

There are various reasons for the supposition that each of the Babylonian libraries according to the studies of the several religious and scientific schools had a distinctive character. The Assyrian libraries, on the other hand, being all of later date, had more general and more varied contents.

The idea that these libraries were for the use of the general public, is not well founded, and rather improbable. They were probably designed in the first place, for the learned men and scribes of the king, as well as for his own[539] use, for the instruction of his sons, and future officials, as well as for archives of the state. They do not in the least prove that culture, learning, and erudition were the property of all classes in Assyria.h

Epistolary Literature

At the same time the large number of written private documents which have been unearthed—the letters and contract tablets—show that writing was not an unusual thing among the people as a whole.

From one point of view these old letters are the most interesting form of Babylonian literature because they show better than anything else the real life of the nation. At first thought it may seem that a correspondence on clay must have been cumbersome, but most of these little letters were not so large as an ordinary envelope and some of them were only two or three inches long, and could easily be carried in the pocket. Some of them were enclosed in an outer envelope of clay which frequently contained a copy of the real document within.

In connection with the code of Khammurabi, his correspondence with one of his officials, Sin-idinnam, is particularly interesting because in these letters we find references to the same subjects which are treated of in the laws. In them all, we see Khammurabi attending to the minutest affairs of his kingdom, taking a personal interest in everything. It seems to have been a comparatively easy matter to get the king’s ear. He received letters complaining of things we should perhaps consider beneath the notice of a powerful king, and he seems to have devoted careful thought to all.

The letters of Khammurabi have been edited and translated by Mr. L. W. King, of the British Museum. They have been also translated by Dr. G. Nageli for a doctor’s dissertation, at Berlin, and published in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. IV. Some of the latter’s translations are given below.a

We also have examples of the private correspondence of the same period, showing the style of letter one Babylonian wrote to another. The following remarks and translations of letters are taken from a dissertation giving letters from the time of Khammurabi.a

The insignificant contents of some of these letters show that letter writing at that time was a general custom and the theory again and again thrusts itself forward that a comparatively regular postal service was already in existence. These letters also show how far Babylonian commerce extended in the second half of the third century before Christ. Every letter throws new light upon that far distant past and helps us to form an ever surer picture of the daily life of the old Babylonian people. Following are a few examples to give an idea of the epistolary style.

Among the large number of letters which have been preserved it has been possible to find more than one written by the same person, and, by putting these together, to get some idea of the life and character of the writer. The letters of a certain Bel-Ibni are prominent among these. They contain allusions to historical events mentioned on the monuments, thus contributing valuable details to these rather barren records of events. Bel-Ibni himself was a general in the army of Ashurbanapal. Below is a translation of one of these letters made by Dr. C. Johnston,k in the Epistolary literature of the Assyrians and Babylonians in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. XVIII.a

Professor Delitzsch in an article in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. I. entitled Beiträge zur Erklärung der babylonisch-assyrischen Brieflitteratur, has given a translation of a letter from the king to this same Bel-Ibni:

Some of the letters throw light on religious ceremonies, others are communications from astrologers telling whether or not the signs of the heavens are propitious for certain undertakings. There are still others from physicians telling of patients under their care. The following is translated by Dr. Johnston:a

Several letters have been preserved of a certain Ishtar-duri, who appears to have lived during the reign of Sargon (722-705 B.C.), and was perhaps[543] identical with the eponym of the same name in the year 714. Dr. Johnston has translated a communication of his to the king:a

ART

Art occupies too prominent a position in the life of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and they have produced too much that is original and peculiar to them, for this history to pass over the question in silence. Even a mere sketch of their culture would be incomplete without it. At the same time great precaution is necessary. In the determination of the chronological succession of undated monuments so much depends on subjective valuation and æsthetic judgment that, without a long and conscientious study of the history of art, one is liable to serious error. And the determination of dates largely influences one’s conception of the progress of Babylonian-Assyrian art; æsthetic judgment, one’s decision concerning the character, independence, and value of this artistic effort.

Here again, as in the language, religion, and in the whole civilisation of this people the unity of the Babylonian-Assyrian race comes clearly to light. Whatever differences may exist between Babylonian and Assyrian art in the conception of detail, in certain peculiarities of technique, in the choice of subjects, at bottom they are one. It has ever been characterised as a national school in which one and the same character prevails, so that a work of art, be it from Telloh, Babylon, Nineveh, or Kalah, at once shows its connection with it. All the differences are merely shades, changes caused by time. This is especially noticeable when one considers what material for example was used for building. In Babylonia it is difficult to obtain stone; there are no rocks there. Consequently this material, which had to be brought from a distance, and was therefore expensive, was kept like precious and other metals for the decoration of the whole, for pillars, bas-reliefs, dedicatory inscriptions, etc., or for making a firm foundation, while dried and burnt bricks were used for the buildings themselves. Among the Assyrians this difficulty did not exist. Excellent stone, which was easily worked, was found in close proximity, and the Assyrians understood how to hew and shape it. In spite of this, they imitated the Babylonian custom and used mainly bricks for their buildings. They preferred continually to repair these temples and palaces, which soon fell into ruin, or else to replace them by others, rather than to depart from the traditional mode of building of their ancestors.

[544]

The question has been raised as to whether Babylonian-Assyrian art may not perhaps have been a daughter of the Egyptian. Without doubt Assyrian art was at least influenced by it. All the ivory objects which have yet been found are plainly imitations of Egyptian motives, although they were certainly not made by Egyptians, and some of them date from the time of Asshurnazirpal. The lotus ornament also, which is so often used as a temple decoration, points to an Egyptian origin. Perhaps, however, the models were not borrowed directly from the Egyptians. Certain dishes and cups for drink-offering, which occur in Mesopotamia, as well as in western Asia and southern Europe, are plainly ornamented with Egyptian cartouches, hieroglyphics, and symbols, but in such a divergent form that no Egyptian could have made them; and these objects have the name of the artificer in Aramaic characters on the border or back. It is thus plainly to be seen that this Egyptian fashion wandered into Assyria through the influence of Aramäen artists.

When it is acknowledged, however, that Egyptian patterns were imitated by the Assyrians at a comparatively late date, and that Egyptian motives were borrowed from her artists, it does not by any means follow that Babylonian-Assyrian art as a whole was of Egyptian origin. This could be proved only from the oldest monuments to be found in Babylonia. It was in fact believed, when the art works of Telloh first became known, that they showed a great similarity to the products of Egyptian art. They displayed the same simplicity and naïveness, the same clean-shorn heads and faces, and many other coincidences. The connoisseurs of art, however, believe differently. The similarity is great; nevertheless a careful examination shows the independence of Babylonian art in respect to Egyptian. Thus in the oldest monuments the same peculiarities, truth and strength, appear, which in the later development of art among the Assyrians were so greatly exaggerated, whereas they are wholly lacking in Egyptian figures.

A further similarity is found between the oldest pyramids in the Nile valley and the Babylonian-Assyrian Ziggurat. In the first place, however, the pyramids had a wholly different object from the Ziggurat, and, in the second place, it must not be forgotten that the Babylonian temple architecture varies greatly from the Egyptian. If there is any dependence it is not on the side of the Chaldeans; they did not borrow their art from the Egyptians. At the same time the similarities are so remarkable, especially between the old Chaldaic statues and the oldest productions of Egyptian sculpture, such as the statues of Shafra, Chufu, and Ra-em-ke, that we are compelled here, as in the case of the writing, to suppose a common stock out of which both branches grew independently and in a way peculiar to each.

The important discoveries made by the French consul, De Sarsac, at Telloh have first thrown some light on the old Chaldean art in which the whole Babylonian-Assyrian art has taken its origin. The question as to whether the works of art found there are Semitic or non-Semitic does not concern us here. It is more probably the latter. At any rate we are here confronted with a civilisation preceding the flourishing period of the known Semitic dominion in Babylonia.[35] A temple was found there 53 by 31 metres square which shows the same fundamental plan as the later Chaldean architecture, that is, a structure of burnt on a foundation of dried brick, the[545] corners exactly facing the points of the compass (not the side as in Egypt), a Ziggurat in the centre, the whole, as is seen from stamps on the stones, dating from the time of the priest-prince Gudra, who is known from other sources, and who rebuilt or founded this temple. Besides, a large number of larger and smaller works of art were discovered, cylinders, reliefs, bronze objects, especially statues, which had been collected either by the ruler already mentioned or by other priestly princes or kings.h

Before building a temple or palace, a religious ceremony took place corresponding to what we call to-day laying the corner-stone. Nabuna’id relates that in the ruins of the oldest Chaldean temples he looked for the foundation stone, the temen which the original kings had placed there, and that he had the good fortune to find this corner-stone, whereas several of his predecessors had excavated only in vain. In our days such cylindrical tubes have been found covered with close writing difficult to decipher, which had been placed in little niches at the corners of the foundation facing the four points of the compass. Thus at Nimrod, Rawlinson caused excavations to be carried on in one of the corners of the tower, feeling sure that he would find objects similar to those which had been met with elsewhere. He relates his discovery as follows: “At the end of half an hour a small cavity was found. ‘Bring me,’” said Rawlinson to the man in charge of the digging, “‘bring me the dedicatory cylinder.’ The workman put his hand into the hole and showed the cylinder; those present could not believe their eyes and looked at each other in amazement. The cylinder, covered with inscriptions, then came out of the hiding-place where it had been placed probably by the hands of Nebuchadrezzar himself, and where it had lain for twenty-nine centuries.” In the fruitful excavations which he undertook at Telloh, De Sarsac made similar discoveries. “I found,” said he, “at a depth of scarcely thirty centimeters under the original soil, four cubes of masonry of large bricks and bitumen, measuring eighty centimeters on each side. In the centre of these cubes was a cavity of twenty-seven centimeters by twelve and by thirty-five of depth. This cavity filled with yellow sand enclosed a statuette of bronze, representing now a man kneeling, again a woman standing, sometimes also a bull. At the foot of each statue, usually embedded in the bitumen which lined the cavity, were found two stone tablets, one white, the other black. It was the black one which usually bore an inscription in cuneiform characters, like or almost like the one carved on the figure of bronze.” Moreover De Sarsac in place of statuettes found cones of clay in the shape of large nails with hemispherical heads, and having an inscription around the stem.m

It has been believed that three stages of development may be detected in this ancient art. To the first belong the reliefs, which represent scenes of war and burial which have not yet been satisfactorily explained, drawn very awkwardly and comparatively rough and primitive. This stage represents the infancy of art. To the second stage are counted the eight statues of Gudea and the one of Ur-ba-’u which are carved with great skill and fine artistic feeling out of hard stone, as it appears of diorite.

The strength which characterises the sculptural efforts of the Babylonians and especially of the Assyrians, is already manifest, although without that exaggeration of the muscles and joints which is so pronounced with the latter. Hands and feet in particular are most carefully executed. The heads are totally different from the hairy and bearded Assyrian, or even early Babylonian heads. They are perfectly clean shaven, but sometimes seemingly decked with an artificial hair arrangement or something of that sort; all just as in Egypt. In addition, an attempt to suggest the folds of draperies[546] is seen, which we do not find among the Babylonians and Assyrians nor the Egyptians, but only later among the Persians and Greeks. In the third so-called classic period are placed works of art of most finished execution, which show a decided advance, among which are pictures, in which beard and hair are worked out with the greatest care.

It would be exaggerated scepticism to deny that these art productions exceed in antiquity, nearly everything found in Babylonia until now. The only exception could be the beautiful cylinder of the time of Sargon I, if we assume that this monarch reigned about 3800 B.C., and that this work of art is of his time. But this is by no means established as a fact.

It can also not be denied that these creations of early Chaldaic art, although in some instances only feeble attempts, in others, however, are of such finished perfection, that in succeeding periods they were never excelled and seldom equalled.

We have here a similar case to one in Egypt, where, for instance, under the kings of the fourth dynasty, sculpture reached an eminence, which nothing of later date ever approached, and where the oldest works of art have a value which none of the Egyptian sculptures of the following centuries can claim. In both these countries therefore there is an early, surprisingly rapid development, followed by a speedy decline; where even in succeeding brilliant epochs no successful attempts to equal the results of the first florescence were ever made. Such a phenomenon is all the more striking when it is considered that these later epochs, whether in Egypt, in Babel, or in Asshur, were by no means periods of degeneration, but show, although with continual fluctuations, marked progress in literature, science, government, and general culture. It seems probable that the cause lies in the difference of race. The artists who carved the statues of King Schafra, were no more Semites than, judging from all appearances and from the facial types of the monarchs, pictured, were the sculptors who immortalised King Gudea. Later on the Egyptian population became more and more affected by Semitic elements, and under the increasing influence of the Semites, art declined.

Not until under the Saits, who certainly were not descended from a race intermixed with Semitic blood, did art rise again to a height which recalled the palmy days of the ancient realm. Thus early Chaldaic art was the mother of that of Babylonia and Assyria, and the Semites of Babylon and Asshur proved themselves diligent students, gifted imitators, who gave to their works also the stamp of their own genius; but they were never more than students and imitators, they never produced anything original which might stand in equality by the side of early Chaldaic art. The Semitic race occupies one of the foremost positions in the history of civilisation, and is highly talented. But in architecture and sculpture it has always worked in close connection with foreign masters, and never produced anything really great by itself.[36] The further it goes from the ancient centres, where the great tradition of the former so highly developed art still lived on, the more unskilful become its productions in this field. Assyria where the Semitic blood was purer than in Babylonia, and which was certainly surpassed in art by the latter, Phœnicia, Palestine, and Arabia, are proofs of this. Only when the Semites have handed down the old tradition which they have at least preserved, to the Aryans, the Persians, and Greeks, is there an independent higher development of plastic art. Be that as it may, considered as artists,[547] the Babylonians and Assyrians stand foremost among the Semites, but they are indebted for this to the early Chaldeans.

The character of the Babylonian-Assyrian building has remained in general about the same, from the earliest times, until the destruction of the nation. The architect, more than any other artist, is dependent upon the nature of the material at his disposal; and this in Babylonia was almost exclusively in the form of tiles of clay, either dried in the sun, or baked in the fire. The former, which were made most skilfully in Babylonia, were generally used for foundations, either by simply placing them in layers, or cementing them with wet clay or pitch, or, as in the substructures of the Assyrian palaces, by using them while still in a moist condition, in order that under the pressure of the superstructure they might be united in one solid mass. For the covering of the walls, baked tiles were used. Enamelled or glazed bricks were used in those parts of the building which were most exposed to moisture or the changes of the weather. In Assyria where stone was not expensive this was also used as the outer coating of walls. This, however, is the only important variation which the Assyrian architects allowed themselves. Although it would have been easier for them to erect more beautiful, more pleasing, and certainly more durable buildings of stone, they were not able to rise to the attempt, although they had only to carry out and use in larger measure what had already been found in Chaldea. A short step was indeed taken in this direction.

The Babylonians already knew how to make wooden pillars or columns, probably covered with metal, and made use of them in lighter architecture, as for instance the Naos, or canopy over the figures of the gods. The Assyrians not only copied this, but built columns of stone, and a certain originality and gracefulness in the capitals and bases of their pillars is not to be denied. However, the column never played the same important rôle in their architecture as it does, for instance, in the Græco-Roman and even in the Egyptian. In their great buildings they clung almost servilely to the designs handed down during centuries. The question as to whether the buildings had more than one story, was formerly almost generally admitted as a fact, but it is generally denied now, and can really hardly be determined. The ruins give no positive support to either theory; but a few reliefs give representations of two-storied buildings.

Tile construction presents necessarily a certain monotony which is here accentuated by the absence of windows. To relieve this monotony, glazing, colouring, or woodwork were resorted to, in case the use of columns was excluded; sometimes more artistic measures were used, such as projecting pilasters, which in Chaldea were somewhat crude, but richly ornamented in Assyria; also mosaics of conical form, or decorations of vases on the walls. The upper stones of the walls were decorated with battlements. The inner, as well as the outer walls, had a stone covering up to a certain height, and higher up a polychromatic layer of stucco. Ivory, and particularly bronze decorations, were much employed. In spite of all this, the impression given by Babylonian and Assyrian buildings is one of massiveness, almost clumsiness, and the decorations seem childish, paltry, and commonplace. Hence also the disproportion of length and breadth, in other words the elongated form of the rooms, whose roof not being supported by columns, had to rest on the side walls, and whose breadth depended on the length of the roof beams.

On the other hand, the almost exclusive use of tiles had this advantageous result, that it was almost imperative to make prodigal use of arch and vault construction. That the Chaldaic architects were the inventors of these[548] constructions, with which the Etruscans were formerly erroneously credited, cannot be positively affirmed, for they are also found in Egypt, although seldom made use of there. Without doubt, however, the Babylonians and Assyrians developed them greatly and knew how to make use of them with great skill. From the false arch, which is formed by allowing each succeeding layer of stone to project over the foregoing one, to the finished arch, all kinds are represented by them. Not only were all underground canals and sewers, vaults of masonry, but all gateways ended in arches, and even the ceilings of some apartments, particularly those in the part of the palaces which seems to have been the harem were wholly or partially vaulted.

The Babylonians and Assyrians have built extensively many and great cities enclosed within mighty walls, extended palaces and peculiar temples. They cannot be enumerated here or even described in general terms.

A few important points, however, may be touched upon. In the first place it must be noticed that, while in Egypt the monumental buildings were tombs and temples, in Babylon and Asshur they were mainly palaces. Although no pains nor expense were spared in the erection of the temples, they were smaller than the palaces, of which they were in some cases certainly annexes.

The tombs were constructed with great care, in order to guard against the rapid decay of the corpses, yet the inhabitants of Mesopotamia never reached the same degree of perfection in the embalming of bodies as the Egyptians: they were also fitted out with everything that, according to their faith, was necessary for the dead, but they were piled upon each other, and thus excluded from view. Art was not expended upon them; on the other hand, however, all known means of art were used to decorate the residences of the kings and the earthly habitations of the gods in the most splendid and sumptuous manner. Their size increased continually. The early Chaldaic palace discovered at Telloh, had an area of only 53 meters long by 31 broad; the so-called Wasevas at Warka (Erech) was 200 meters long by 150 broad; the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin covered an area of about 10 hectares, and contained 30 open courts and more than 200 apartments. Under the Sargonids the rooms also became larger. One in the palace of Sennacherib was almost as long as the entire palace at Telloh, i.e., 46 meters long by 12 wide. Another in the palace of Esarhaddon, which was intended to be 15 meters by 12 meters, remained unfinished, probably on account of the difficulty of construction. The palace of Asshurbanapal was of somewhat smaller, though still magnificent proportions. The great palace of Nebuchadrezzar II, consisting of the old palace of his father and a new one constructed by him and joined to the old, has not yet been sufficiently explored, but according to the descriptions, must have surpassed in splendour, if not in size, all those of his predecessors. All palaces were constructed on the same plan, and contained separate living apartments for the king and his court, for his wives, for the lower court officials, and, as it appears, also a temple with various sanctuaries and a tower.

Too little is as yet known of the Babylonian-Assyrian temples to judge with any certainty of their style of architecture. Here and there, remains of temples have been found, but it has not yet been proved that the buildings designated as temples were really devoted to religious purposes. Most of the temples seem to have been small, at any rate not intended for large assemblages. The altar stood outside and consequently the religious services must usually have taken place there.

Every large town had many temples but always only one Ziggurat. This constituted only one part of the principal temple, albeit the most prominent[549] one. There were various kinds of such towers, of three or more, sometimes seven stories, which were attainable by a single inclined plane encircling the whole building, or a double one rising on two sides of it. The ground plan was a perfect square in some, in others a parallelogram; all rested, however, on a massive substructure, and seem to have been crowned with a small sanctuary.

Although these principal temples, including the Ziggurat, were not of equal extent with the royal palaces, they were nevertheless imposing buildings, and the towers in particular were erected with much care and at great expense. It would be wrong to conclude from this ratio of temples and palaces that the Assyrians were less religious and more servile than the Egyptians, who, entirely dominated as they were by the dogma of immortality, lavished more care on the tombs of the dead kings than on the habitations of the living ones. The valuable decorations and sculptures which the Assyrians and Babylonians gave to their gods prove their pious tendency. In reality the whole palace was a sacred edifice in which the representative of the deity lived on earth with and beside his god.

The aid which architecture received from other arts has already been briefly mentioned. There are still a few particulars to be noticed in regard to this point. The Assyrians as well as the Babylonians were skilful workers in bronze. Proofs of this are the bronze door-sill 1½ meters long, found at Borsippa, whose decorations of rosettes and squares are in very good taste, and particularly the bronze gates at Balawat, belonging to the 9th century B.C., which are masterpieces of their kind, and a great number of other remains.

Painting was also employed to decorate the exterior as well as the interior of walls. Ornaments and figures were painted with great skill on stucco, al fresco in such a case, or on tiles which were afterwards glazed. These tiles were sometimes joined to make one picture. In what remains of such work it is shown that painting had attained quite an eminence in Babylon and Asshur. Drawing and grouping are often very successful, and the treatment has often a certain breadth. These paintings are also important because it is seen from them how much conventionality prevailed in Assyrian sculpture. In painting there is nothing of that exaggerated muscularity nor of the almost clumsy strength of the sculptured figures. Beard and hair are not as stiffly curled as in the sculptures, but hang more loosely and naturally.h A beautiful example of glazed tiling has recently been excavated by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft at Babylon. It is in the so-called Procession street leading from Babylon to Borsippa; on either side of the street were walls faced with coloured tiles representing a stately procession of lions and other animals, very artistically drawn.a

Sculpture, more than painting, was employed in decorating buildings, the works of which covered the greater part of the palace walls, and ornamented the gateways, courts, terraces, and apartments. The material which the sculptor used in Chaldea was usually valuable stone difficult to procure, such as basalt, dolorite, diorite; in Assyria, generally a commoner, more easily worked species, such as alabaster and sandstone. The difference of material naturally influenced the work itself. Figures of cast bronze are also often found.

The inscriptions of the Babylonian kings often speak of columns erected in honour of the gods, of which some were made of solid gold or silver, others only coated with precious metal, and the Assyrian kings also mention such dedications. Naturally the columns of precious metal have not survived,[550] but a great number of stone pillars have been found. It may be chance, that the greater number of statues in the round are from Babylon, the greater number of bas-reliefs from Assyria. The objects of these surviving sculptures are mainly of a religious or historical character. But rarely does a representation of the domestic life of the monarch or other social circles appear.

Only once is a banquet pictured, that of king Asshurbanapal and his queen. Otherwise no women, except captives, appear in the reliefs. On the whole little tendency is shown to represent female beauty and grace, as compared with the Egyptians and especially with the Greeks. The nude female figure is seldom pictured, and if so, in a repulsively realistic form, as in the small figures of the mother goddess. Cheerful or comic scenes, which are not wanting even in Egyptian reliefs and vignettes, are never found here. Hasty conclusions, however, should not be drawn from this, and it should not be forgotten, that most of the surviving reliefs are from the palaces, few from the temples, still fewer from the tombs, and none at all from private residences. This is doubtless one of the reasons why representations of domestic or private life are so scarce. In fact, in a few of the tombs reliefs have been found whose subjects recall favourite representations in those of Egypt. Most prevalent certainly, are those scenes relating to religious and public life.

In the treatment of these objects, truth is often sacrificed to certain conventionalities. Thus for instance the Lamassi and Shedi, the man-headed lions and bulls have five legs, in order that they may always present four to the eye, whether viewed from the front or the side; the heads are usually represented in profile with the eyes in full face, but sometimes in full face, although the image presents a side view to the beholder, which was also customary in Egypt; so also, the stiff curling of the hair and beard is unnatural. Apparently no attempt had ever been made in Egypt to make portraits of historical personages, and the individual differences of rank and condition can only be recognised by objects of secondary importance. There is, however, still some doubt upon this point. There is indeed a great uniformity, but an attempt at least to differentiate facial traits cannot be overlooked. Ignoring all accessories, the features differ among kings and higher courtiers on the one hand, and lower men-at-arms on the other, among men and eunuchs, among adults and youths. Wherever the artists of Mesopotamia were not limited by conventionality,—notably in the representation of animals,—they have surpassed in accuracy, in truth and strength of representation all other nations of antiquity, the Greeks hardly excepted. This is particularly true of the representation of native animals, yet foreign ones were treated with great skill, although the delineation of these betrays less practice. Even in the picturing of therianthropic deities, they remain as true to nature as possible, and with much taste and tact allow the human attributes of the figure to predominate. Wherever it is possible to partially or wholly break away from tradition, their talent is displayed in a manner truly marvellous. Their only prominent fault is their exaggerated realism, which shows itself not only in the monstrous drawing of muscles and joints, but also in the disgusting details of the nude figures of Astarte.

Too little of the sculpture of the new Babylonian realm has been preserved to allow judgment of the state of art during this period. The well known carving of Nebuchadrezzar II on a cameo would force us to have a very high opinion of it, if convincing reasons did not argue that, although genuine, it is the work of a foreign, probably a Cyprian, artist.

There is no doubt that the art of music was cultivated among the Babylonians and Assyrians, since the reliefs show musicians very frequently, at[551] religious festivals, at triumphal greetings of the victorious king and at festivities. They play singly or in concert, and also accompany singing. The musical instruments are of various kinds, and the musicians, who are sometimes very daintily attired, are not always eunuchs, and are of different ages.

On the whole it must be conceded, that the Assyrio-Babylonian nation was artistically inclined and that it cultivated various branches of art with talent and success. If they, the Assyrians in particular, had been able to free themselves from tradition, they might have surpassed their predecessors and teachers. They practised art, however, not for itself alone, but as a means of glorifying the gods or the kings, and the historical reliefs at least, are for the greater part nothing more than illustrations to the inscriptions, a sort of war-report in pictures. They were not an artistic people like the Greeks. Still they have produced more and better results in this respect, than all other nations of their race put together. And although in some special instances they may have been excelled by the Egyptians, in others they are far in advance of them. The Assyrians, following the example of the Babylonians, showed their artistic talents also in the productions of their industries; art and industry were with them closely related.

Among the productions to be considered here are primarily the hundreds of seals, which are still in preservation, and whose number will not seem so surprising when it is remembered that every Babylonian and Assyrian of quality had his private seal. In early times these were always, and in later times generally, cylinders, pierced through the centre, to be worn around the neck suspended from a cord. The impression was made by rolling them over moist clay. After the eighth century conical and half-spherical seals appear. These cylinders are made of many different materials, at first, of easily carved, later of harder, material, such as porphyry, basalt, ferruginous marble, serpentine, syenite and hematite. After that, semi-precious stones were used, jasper, agate, onyx, chalcedony, rock-crystal, garnet, etc. In the oldest stones the pictured objects were rather suggested by indentations and strokes, than actually executed and carved; but gradually a great skilfulness was attained, and there are beautiful cuttings in the hard stones also. The execution varied greatly of course, not only in proportion to the talent of the artist, but also according to the rank and wealth of the person who gave the commission. The subjects chosen are mostly of a religious nature, the adoration of a goddess, an offering of sacrifice, various emblems such as winged animals, sun, moon, and stars, and very frequently the tree of life, in whose shadow stand two persons, or which is guarded by two genii. Under the new Babylonian dominion and under the Achamenides, glyptics as an art declined rapidly.

Ceramic art seems not to have occupied a very lofty position in Babylonia at first. Clay vases and utensils, during a long period made by hand, are crude and inartistic in earliest times. Gradually with the introduction of the potter’s wheel, however, they become more graceful in form, and towards the end of the Assyrian period are enamelled and decorated with patterns painted in colours. However, Babylonian ceramic art cannot compete with that of Greece, although it surpasses that of Egypt. Glass has not been found in large quantities, to be sure, but quite advanced progress had been made in its manufacture. The Assyrians and Babylonians showed particular skill in the working of metals. Bronze, a mixture of copper and tin, was known to them in the earliest times. They had a knowledge of iron earlier than the Egyptians, and certainly made much greater use of it. Gold[552] objects are commoner than those of silver, and lead is seldom used. Ornaments, such as bracelets, ear-rings, and necklaces are usually cast of precious metal and often inlaid with pearls. It may be taken as a proof of highly advanced culture that they used not only spoons, but forks, a luxury introduced into Europe only at the close of the Middle Ages, and that toilet articles, such as combs, pins, etc., were ornamented with the greatest care and skill.

The Assyrians were also more skilled in mechanics than the Egyptians and were not inferior to them in agriculture. Two reliefs, one Assyrian, the other Egyptian, give us an opportunity to compare how each nation overcame the difficulties attending the moving and putting in place of their enormous collossi of stone. It is shown that the Assyrians knew the use of the lever, which the Egyptians did not, and that they took much greater precautions against upsetting the collossi. How the Babylonians and Assyrians, like the Egyptians and Chinese, made use of irrigation is well known. On the same tablets with the records of their deeds of war, the rulers often spoke of the laying out of canals, the regulating and deepening of the river beds “enduring waters for the enduring use of town and country,” and associated their own names with them. On account of the higher altitude of their country than that of their southern brethren, the Assyrians had to surmount greater difficulties in achieving such works, but this did not deter them from rivalry with them. One canal leading from the Upper Zab and one of its tributaries, irrigated the region between this river and the Tigris, and also supplied the capital, Kalah, with drinking water.

Sennacherib did something similar for Nineveh, which together with its environs was completely dependent upon rain. He had a network of canals constructed, which were fed, partly by the Khushur, and partly by the small mountain brooks of the Accad and Tash mountains. Here also two objects were attained, to furnish Nineveh with good drinking water, and to make the surrounding country fruitful; for the king had it all planted with many kinds of plants, among which was the vine. Floriculture was also much encouraged by the kings of Babylon and Asshur. They admired beautiful parks in which strange foreign animals were bred and nurtured. Marduk-bel-iddin, king of Bit-Yakin, apparently the same who at one time overcame Babylon, owned sixty-seven vegetable gardens and six parks of which a catalogue still exists, although he was constantly at war or guarding against the vengeance of the Assyrians.h

ASSYRIAN ART

But the world-historic relations of Mesopotamian art are best brought out by a study of the later and more perfectly preserved examples of Assyrian[553] craftsmanship. It was the Assyrian who borrowed more directly from the Egyptian in developing his art, and who passed on artistic impulses to the Persians on the one hand, and to the Greeks on the other. The question to what extent the Assyrians were themselves influenced by the Mycenæan art of early Greece is one regarding which students of the subject are not agreed, and which we need not enter upon here.a

It is impossible to examine the monuments of Assyria without being convinced that the people who raised them had acquired a skill in sculpture and painting, and a knowledge of design and even composition, indicating an advanced state of civilisation. It is very remarkable that the most ancient ruins show this knowledge in the greatest perfection attained by the Assyrians. The bas-relief representing the lion hunt, now in the British Museum, is a good illustration of the earliest school of Assyrian art yet known. It far exceeds the sculptures of Khorsabad, Kuyunjik, or the later palaces of Nimrud, in the vigour of the treatment, the elegance of the forms, and in what the French aptly term mouvement. At the same time it is eminently distinguished from them by the evident attempt at composition—by the artistical arrangement of the groups. The sculptors who worked at Khorsabad and Kuyunjik had perhaps acquired more skill in handling their tools. Their work is frequently superior to that of the earlier artists in delicacy of execution—in the details of the features, for instance—and in the boldness of the relief; but the slightest acquaintance with Assyrian monuments will show that they were greatly inferior to their ancestors in the higher branches of art—in the treatment of a subject and in beauty and variety of form. This decline of art, after suddenly attaining its greatest perfection in its earliest stage, is a fact presented by almost every people, ancient and modern, with which we are acquainted. In Egypt the most ancient monuments display the purest forms and the most elegant decorations. A rapid retrogression, after a certain period, is apparent, and the state of art serves to indicate approximately the epoch of most of her remains. In the history of Greek and Roman art this sudden rise and rapid fall are equally well known. Even changes in royal dynasties have had an influence upon art, as a glance at monuments of that part of the East of which we are specially treating will show. Thus the sculpture of Persia, as that of Assyria, was in its best state at the time of the earliest monarchs, and gradually declined until the fall of the empire. After the Greek invasion it revived under the first kings of the Arsacid branch, Greek taste still exercising an influence over the Iranian provinces. How rapidly art degenerated to the most barbarous forms, the medals and monuments of the later Arsacids abundantly prove. When the Sassanians restored the old Persian monarchy and introduced the ancient religion and sacred ceremonies of the empire, art again appears to have received a momentary impulse. The coins, gems, and rock sculptures of the first kings of this dynasty are distinguished by considerable elegance, and spirit of design, and beauty of form. But the decay was as rapid under them as it had been under their predecessors. Even before the Chosroes raised the glory and power of the empire to its highest pitch, art was fast degenerating. By the time of Yezdigird it had become even more rude and barbarous than in the last days of the Arsacids.

This decline in art may be accounted for by supposing that, in the infancy of a people, or after the occurrence of any great event having a very decided influence upon their manners, their religion, or their political state, nature was the chief, if not the only, object of study. When a certain proficiency had been attained, and no violent changes took place to shake the established[554] order of things, the artist, instead of endeavouring to imitate that which he saw in nature, received as correct delineations the works of his predecessors, and made them his types and his models. In some countries, as in Egypt, religion may have contributed to this result. Whilst the imagination, as well as the hand, was fettered by prejudices, and even by laws, or whilst indolence or ignorance led to the mere servile copying of what had been done before, it may easily be conceived how rapidly a deviation from correctness of form would take place. As each transmitted the errors of those who had preceded him, and added to them himself, it is not wonderful if, ere long, the whole became one great error. It is to be feared that this prescriptive love of imitation has exercised no less influence on modern art than it did upon the arts of the ancients.

As the earliest specimens of Assyrian art which we possess are the best, it is natural to conclude that either there are other monuments still undiscovered which would tend to show a gradual progression, or that such monuments did once exist, but have long since perished; otherwise it must be inferred that those who raised the most ancient Assyrian edifice derived their knowledge directly from another people, or merely imitated what they had seen in a foreign land. Some are inclined to look upon the style and character of these early sculptures as purely Egyptian. But there is such a disparity in the mode of treatment and in the execution, that the Egyptian origin of Assyrian art appears to me to be a question open to considerable doubt. That which they have in common would mark the first efforts of any people of a certain intellectual order to imitate nature. The want of relative proportions in the figures and the ignorance of perspective—the full eye in the side face and the bodies of the dead scattered above or below the principal figures—are as characteristic of all early productions of art as they are of the rude attempts at delineation of children. It is only in the later monuments of Nineveh that we find evident and direct traces of Egyptian influence: as in the sitting sphinxes and ivories of Nimrud, and in the lotus-shaped ornaments of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik; perhaps also in the custom which then prevailed of inserting the name of the king, or of the castle, upon or immediately above their sculptured representations. Neither the ornaments of the earliest palace of Nimrud, nor the costumes, nor the elaborate nature of the embroideries upon the robes, with the groups of human figures and animals, nor the mythological symbols, are of an Egyptian character; they show a very different taste and style.

The principal distinction between Assyrian and Egyptian art appears to be that in the one conventional forms were much more strictly adhered to[555] than in the other. The angular mode of treatment, so conspicuous in Egyptian monuments, even in the delineation of every object, is not perceivable in those of Assyria. Had the arts of the two countries been derived from the same source—or had one been imitated from the other—they would both surely have displayed the same striking peculiarity. The Assyrians, less fettered, sought to imitate nature more closely, however rude and unsuccessful their attempts may have been; and this is proved by the constant endeavour to show the muscles, veins, and anatomical proportions of the human figure.

We must not lose sight of the assertion of Moses of Chorene—derived no doubt from ancient traditions, if not from direct historical evidence—that when Ninus founded the Assyrian Empire, a people far advanced in civilisation and in the knowledge of the arts and sciences, whose works the conquerors endeavoured to destroy, were already in possession of the country. Who that people may have been, we cannot now even conjecture. The same mystery hangs over the origin of the arts in Egypt and in Assyria. They may have been derived, before the introduction of any conventional forms, from a common source—from a people whose very name, and the proofs of whose former existence, may have perished even before tradition begins.

The monuments of Assyria furnish us with very important data, as to the origin of many branches of art, subsequently brought to the highest perfection in Asia Minor and Greece. I conceive the Assyrian influence on Asia Minor to have been twofold. In the first place, direct, during the time of the greatest prosperity of the Assyrian monarchy or empire, when, as it has been shown, the power of its kings extended over that country; in the second, indirect, through Persia, after the destruction of Nineveh. Of the influence exercised upon the arts of western Asia, during the early occupation of the Assyrians, few traces have hitherto been discovered, unless the remarkable monuments on the site of ancient Pteria, or Pterium, belong to this period. The evident connection between the divinities and sacred emblems worshipped in various parts of Asia Minor, and those of Assyria will be hereafter particularly pointed out. The Assyrian origin of these monuments, and of these religious symbols, once admitted, we shall have no difficulty in recognising the influence of Assyria on the arts and customs of Asia Minor. The antiquities of that country, prior to a well-known period, the Persian occupation, have been but little investigated. Few remains of an earlier epoch have yet been discovered. That such remains do exist, perhaps buried under ground, I have little doubt. It is most probable that, as we have additional materials for inquiry, we shall be still more convinced of this Assyrian influence, pointed out by Herodotus, when he declares the founder of the kingdom of Lydia to have been a descendant of Ninus, and by other authors, who mention the Syrian, or Assyrian, descent of many nations of Asia Minor.

But the second, or indirect, period of this influence is very fully and completely illustrated by the monuments of Asia Minor, of the time of the Persian domination. The known connection between these monuments and the archaic forms of Greek art renders this part of the inquiry both important and interesting. The Xanthian marbles, acquired for England by Sir Charles Fellows, and now in the British Museum, are remarkable illustrations of the threefold connection between Assyria and Persia, Persia and Asia Minor, and Asia Minor and Greece. Were those marbles properly arranged, and placed in chronological order, they would afford a most useful lesson, and would enable even a superficial observer to trace the gradual progress of art from its primitive rudeness to the most classic conceptions of the Greek[556] sculptor. Not that he would find either style, the pure Assyrian or the Greek, in its greatest perfection; but he would be able to see how a closer imitation of nature, a gradual refinement of taste and additional study, had converted the hard and rigid lines of the Assyrians into the flowing draperies and classic forms of the highest order of art.

I have termed this second period that of indirect influence, because the arts did not then penetrate directly into Asia Minor from Assyria, but were conveyed thither through the Persians. The Assyrian Empire had already existed for centuries, and had exercised the supreme power over Asia, before it was disputed by the kingdoms of Persia and Media, united under one monarch. The Persians were probably a rude people, possessing neither a literature nor arts of their own, but deriving what they had from their civilised neighbours. We have no earlier specimen of Persian writing than the inscription containing the name of Cyrus, on the ruins supposed to be those of his tomb, at Murghaub [Pasargarda]; nor any earlier remains of Persian art than the buildings and sculptures of Persepolis, and other monuments to be attributed beyond a question to the kings of the Achæmenian dynasty. It has already been shown that the writing of the Persians was imitated from the Assyrians, and it can as easily be proved that their sculptures were derived from the same source. The monuments of Persepolis establish this beyond a doubt. They exhibit precisely the same mode of treatment, the same forms, the same peculiarities in the arrangement of the bas-reliefs against the walls, the same entrances formed by gigantic winged animals with human heads, and, finally, the same religious emblems. Had this identity been displayed in one instance alone, we might have attributed it to chance, or to mere casual intercourse; but when it pervades the whole system, we can scarcely doubt that one was a close copy, an imitation, of the other. That the peculiar characteristics of the Persepolitan sculptures were derived from the monuments of the second Assyrian dynasty—that is, from those of the latest Assyrian period—can be proved by the similarity of shape in the ornaments and in the costume of many of the figures. Thus, the head-dress of the winged monsters forming the portals is lofty, squared, and richly ornamented at the top, resembling those of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, and differing from the round, unornamented cap of the older figures at Nimrud.

The processions of warriors, captives, and tribute-bearers at Persepolis are in every respect similar to those on the walls of Nimrud and Khorsabad; we have the same mode of treatment in the figures, the same way of portraying the eyes and hair. The Persian artist introduced folds into the draperies; but, with this exception, he certainly did not improve upon his Assyrian model. On the contrary, his work is greatly inferior to it in the general arrangement of the groups and in the elegance of the details.

From whence the Persians obtained the column and other architectural ornaments used at Persepolis, it may be more difficult to determine. We have seen that the column was not unknown to the later Assyrians, although it does not appear to have been employed in the construction of their palaces. The Persians, therefore, may have partly derived their knowledge from them; and partly, perhaps principally, from the Egyptians, whom, before the foundation of Persepolis, they had already conquered. It will be observed that the capitals of their columns frequently assume the shape of Assyrian religious types, the bull for instance; whilst other portions of them nearly resemble in the form of their ornaments, though not in their proportions, those of Egypt.

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The Persians introduced into Asia Minor the arts and religion which they received from the Assyrians. Thus the Harpy Tomb and the monument usually attributed to Harpagus at Xanthus, and other still earlier remains, show all the peculiarities of the sculpture of Persepolis, and at the same time that gradual progress in the mode of treatment—the introduction of action and sentiment, and a knowledge of anatomy—which marks the distinction between Asiatic and Greek art. Whilst there was a manifest improvement in the disposition of the draperies and in the delineation of the human form, we still remark, even in the latest works of the Persian period in Asia Minor, the absence of all attempt to impart sentiment to the features, or even to give more than the side view of the human face.

Many architectural ornaments, known to the Assyrians, passed from them, directly or indirectly, into Greece. The Ionic column is an instance. We have, moreover, in the earliest monuments of Nineveh that graceful ornament, commonly called the honeysuckle, which was so extensively used in Greece, and is to this day more generally employed than any other moulding. In Assyria, as I have pointed out, it was invested with sacred properties, and was either a symbol or an object of worship. That the similarity between the Assyrian and Greek ornament is not accidental, seems to be proved, beyond a question, by the alternation of the lotus or tulip, whichever this flower may be, with the honeysuckle, by the number of leaves or petals of the flower, and by their proceeding in both from a semicircle, supported by two tendrils or scrolls. The same ornament occurs, even in India, on a lath erected by Asoka at Allahabad (about B.C. 250); but whether introduced by the Greeks—which, from the date of the erection of the monument, shortly after the Macedonian invasion, is not improbable—or whether derived directly from another source, I cannot venture to decide.

That the Assyrians possessed a highly refined taste can hardly be questioned when we find them inventing an ornament which the Greeks afterwards, with few additions and improvements, so generally adopted in their most classic monuments. Others, no less beautiful, continually occur in the most ancient bas-reliefs of Nimrud. The sacred bull, with expanded wings, and the wild goat are introduced, kneeling before the mystic flower which is the principal feature in the border just described. The same animals are occasionally represented supporting disks, or flowers, and rosettes. A bird, or human figure, frequently takes the place of the bull and goat; and the simple flower becomes a tree, bearing many flowers of the same shape. This tree, evidently a sacred symbol, is elaborately and tastefully formed; and is one of the most conspicuous ornaments of Assyrian sculpture.

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The flowers at the ends of the branches are frequently replaced in later Assyrian monuments and on cylinders by the fir or pine cone, and sometimes by a fruit or ornament resembling the pomegranate.

The guilloche, or intertwining bands, continually found on Greek monuments, and still in common use, was also well known to the Assyrians, and was one of their most favourite ornaments. It was embroidered on their robes, embossed on their arms and chariots, and painted on their walls. This purity and elegance of taste was equally displayed in the garments, arms, furniture, and trappings of the Assyrians. The robes of the king were most elaborately embroidered. The part covering his breast was generally adorned, not only with flowers and scroll-work, but with groups of figures, animals, and even hunting and battle scenes. In other parts of his dress similar designs were introduced, and rows of tassels or fringes were carried round the borders. The ear-rings, necklaces, armlets, and bracelets were all of the most elegant forms. The clasps and ends of the bracelets were frequently in the shape of the heads of rams and bulls, resembling our modern jewellery. The ear-rings have generally on the later monuments, particularly in the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad, the form of a cross.

In their arms the Assyrians rivalled even the Greeks in elegance of design. The hilt of the sword was frequently ornamented with four lions’ heads; two, with part of the neck and shoulders, made the cross-bar or defence, and two more with extended jaws were introduced into the handle. The end of the sheath was formed by two entire lions, clasped together, their heads turned outward and their mouths open. Sometimes the whole of the sheath was engraved or embossed, with groups of human figures, animals, and flowers. The handles of the daggers were no less highly ornamented, being sometimes in the form of the head of a horse, bull, or ram. The sheath frequently terminated in the head of a bird, to which a tassel was suspended. The part of the bow to which the string was attached was in the shape of an eagle’s head. The quiver was richly decorated with groups of figures and fanciful designs.

Ornaments in the form of the heads of animals, chiefly the lion, bull, and ram, were very generally introduced even in parts of the chariot, the harness of the horses, and domestic furniture. In this respect the Assyrians resembled the Egyptians.b

ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE AND THE EVOLUTION OF ART

The study of a country’s art is interesting, primarily of course purely as a study in the expression of beauty or in the portraiture of national types and ideals. The study should not, however, stop here, but one should consider also the effect each school has had upon the evolution of the world-art. This phase of Assyrian art has been examined by the Editor in a paper called “The Influence of Modern Research on the Scope of World History,” a Prefatory Essay to Vol. III of the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, from which a quotation may be permitted here.a

Whoever would see the story of the evolution of Greek art illustrated, should go to the British Museum and pass from the Egyptian hall, with its grotesque colossi, to the Assyrian rooms, with their marvellous bas-reliefs, and then on to the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon. In particular, the art treasures of the Assyrian collection should demand the closest scrutiny. In the Nineveh gallery, for example, where one finds collections of strange[559] Assyrian books, the walls are flanked everywhere with bas-reliefs that come from some buried palace that once stored the literary treasures.

It appears that the kings of that far-off time and land were connoisseurs of art as well as patrons of literature; and the art treasures of their palaces certainly form the most striking, if not the most important, part of the mementoes they have left to us. The more closely these figures in low relief are examined, the more wonderful they will seem. They take the place of the Egyptian carvings in the round; and if they are less striking to first view than the great sarcophagi, the grotesque gods, and colossal animal forms of that people, they will prove infinitely more expressive and incomparably more artistic on closer inspection. For these flat sculptures depict, not alone gods and sacerdotal scenes, but everyday affairs and the events of Assyrian history. The bas-relief was clearly the focal point of Assyrian art. Even the great bulls and lions that guarded the palace entrances were only partially detached from their background, and a frescoed statue of King Asshurnazirpal shows the same tendency. The full rounded statue was not indeed unknown to them, as several examples testify; but their real forte lay in mural decoration in low relief. And the particular walls on which the artists mainly expended their skill, if we may judge from what the ruins have revealed to us, were not the walls of temples, but the palaces of kings. It is quite[560] clear that these great conquerors of antiquity were very human, very like their successors of after times. They loved to have their heroic deeds, real or alleged, heralded to the world, and recalled incessantly to their own memories. So one finds whole histories epitomised on these walls—wars, conquests, victories; the storming of cities, the slaughter of the enemy, the leading of captives, and bringing of tribute by subject people—everything, in short, but Assyrian reverses; the court artist, true to his colours then as now, never made the mistake of depicting those.

As historical records these sculptures are of priceless value, both for what they tell of political history and for the light they throw on the powers and limitations of antique art. But before you venture to judge the Assyrian artist in the latter regard, you must pass on to the room of Asshurnazirpal, and from that to the adjacent room, where the mural decorations of the dining-hall of the last of the great Assyrian kings, Asshurbanapal, have been placed in situ, reproducing an effect which they first made in the palace of Nineveh in the seventh century B.C. Here you may see at once both another phase of royal life in Assyria and another stage of Assyrian art. Not war, but the chase is now the theme. King Asshurbanapal is seen in pursuit of the goat, the wild ass, the lion. The king, of course, towers above his attendants, though not in the grotesque disproportion of the Egyptian paintings. To the oriental mind such excessive stature seemed indissoluble from royal station. One recalls how the mother of Darius, made captive at Issus, mistook Hephæstion for the king, because he was taller than Alexander; and how Agesilaus, when he went to Egypt as an ally of the Egyptians, was held in contempt, despite his renown, because of his diminutive stature; and one cannot help wondering what would have been the real aspect of the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchs could they have been subjected to the camera. Be that as it may, there was apparently no doubt in the mind of the court artist as to what his chisel should reveal in this respect, and the king may always be distinguished by his stature, without regard to his royal robes. Still, it is notable, as a distinction between Egyptian and Assyrian art, that the realistic eye of the Assyrian sculptor never let him depict the king as a Brobdingnag among the pigmies, after the Egyptian fashion. At the most he is a head taller than those about him.

The royal hunter pursues his quarry sometimes on foot, more usually standing in his chariot. His weapon is usually the bow, sometimes the spear; on one occasion he grapples with the lion, hand to jowl, and stabs the quarry to the heart with a short sword. The quiet dignity and royal calm with which the feat is achieved must have insured the artist a high and enduring place in the royal favour. The action, however, of the human figures in these sculptures is always sedate and reposeful, suggestive of reserved strength perhaps, or possibly of the artist’s limitations. Whichever it is, the real power of the artist is not shown in the human figures. These, to be sure, are in part strongly anatomised; in the main, they are fairly proportioned, and, unlike the Egyptian figures, they have the shoulders drawn in proper perspective. But the faces are fixed, impassive; the eyes are not in perspective, and, as a whole, they cannot claim high merit as works of art, viewed from an abstract modern standpoint. Considered in relation to their time, they are wonderful enough, so far ahead are they of anything that we could suppose to have been accomplished in the world of that day. But they fall far short of the standard which the same artist has himself given us in animal figures of his composition. It seems as if the human figures might have been done from memory, whereas[561] the animal forms are clearly enough from the natural model. Indeed, when we turn to these animal figures we may criticise them, not with reservation as to their age, but from the standpoint of modern art, and as individual figures they will not be found wanting. The three fundamental canons—“proportion, action, aspect”—have been successfully met. The lions skulk sullenly from their cages, spring furiously into action, or roll in death agony at the will of the depicter. The lioness, with spine broken by an arrow, dragging her palsied hind-quarters, is a veritable masterpiece. The same is true of many of the figures of goats, of running and pacing wild asses, and of dogs. As a whole, these animal frescoes are nothing less than wonderful. It is worth a visit to London from the remotest land to see these sculptures from the palace of the old Assyrian king.

Still, though these bas-reliefs have intrinsic merits as works of art, their chief value is for what they teach regarding the evolution of art in the world. Previously to their discovery it had been supposed that the stiff formalism of Egyptian sculpture represented the fullest flight of pre-Grecian art, and that Greek art itself had stepped suddenly forth, rather a new creation than an evolution. But the pick and shovel of Layard at Nineveh dispelled that illusion. For these art treasures, that had lain there under the deposits of centuries, were found to represent an enormous advance upon Egyptian models, precisely in the direction of that realism for which Greek art is distinguished.

If we would judge how direct and unequivocal was the impulse which the dying nation transferred to the adolescent one in point of art, we have but to take a few steps in the British Museum, from the Assyrian rooms to the wonderful hall that holds Lord Elgin’s trophies from the desecrated Parthenon. Look, then, upon the frieze of bas-relief that bears the magic name of Phidias. If anything can reconcile us to the act that deprived Greece of her priceless heirlooms, it is the fact that they have found lodgment here close beside their oriental prototypes, where half a million visitors each year may at least have an opportunity to learn the lesson that human progress is an accretion, a growth, a building upon foundations; and, specifically, that Greek art, no less than other forms of human culture, was an evolution, and not an isolated miracle. For what is the Parthenon frieze, as we now come to it fresh from the palaces of Nineveh, but an Assyrian fresco adapted to the needs and ideals of another race and developed by the genius of a newer civilisation? The profiled figures in low relief coursing together, are they different in conception from the profiled figures of the palaces we have just left? The horses of the Parthenon frieze might almost seem to have stepped bodily from the palaces of Asshurbanapal. They have gained something in suppleness of limb, have altered their attitude in a measure, to be sure, thanks to their new environment. But their type has not changed by so much as an actual breed of horses might be changed in as many generations.[562] Note the head, the most typical and characteristic feature of this Grecian steed. Line for line it is the same head, trappings aside, that we have just seen at Nineveh. Even the defects of the Assyrian drawing are there—the too small and slender face, and receding lower jaw, the tiny ear, the far too full and “chuffy” neck. Possibly no horse in nature was ever like this, but the Assyrian artist so conceives it; the Greek copies that conception; and the distorted type will be transmitted down the generations to the Italian of the Renaissance, to the classical painters of Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany, and France; nay, even to the artist of the nineteenth century. The court artist of an oriental prince of the ninth or tenth century B.C. conceives a certain ideal; and, following him, a certain type of sculptured horse, such as the artist who carved it has never seen, steps before the chariot on Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in nineteenth-century Paris.c

If Mesopotamian art and literature had been forgotten in succeeding ages, Chaldean science had not shared the same fate. The fame of the Babylonian astrology and astronomy was still fresh in the mind of the Greeks of the day of Diodorus, as we shall see, and it is curious to reflect that even at this relatively late period after Greece had passed far beyond the culminating point of her own career the learned Greek looked upon Chaldean science as something beyond the pale of the science of his own nation. It would seem as if the cultivated Greek looked back upon the Babylonian civilisation with something of that reverence which “modern” European nations have reserved for Greece itself. It is significant, too, that the Babylonians themselves, even in the day of their decline, continued to regard the Greeks, along with the rest of the outside world, as “barbarians” in something more than the Greek sense of the word.

The older civilisation always thus regards the younger, regardless of the actual relative merits of the two. It was an Egyptian priest who lectured the famous Greek in these words: “O Solon! Solon! You Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is a Hellene. In my mind you are all young. There is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science hoary with age”; but the same words might well have been pronounced by a priest of Chaldea. We have learned through Diodorus that the Egyptians guarded the secrets of their science very jealously from the Greeks, who travelled and sojourned there for the express purpose of learning them; and there is reason to suppose that much the same reception was accorded the Greek traveller in Babylonia, since[563] Herodotus seems to have learned so little there beyond what his own direct observations taught him.

But how much ground the Babylonian had for this arrogance of intellectual attitude the modern world had little material for judging, beyond such general assertions as that of Diodorus, until the records of the libraries were revealed. Then it was made evident that as original scientific investigators the Babylonians were no whit inferior to their contemporaries of the Nile, if, indeed, they were not superior; that in short they fully merited the praise which classical tradition accorded them. A people that thus excelled in theoretical science, no less than in art and literature and in practical civilisation, has many claims to be considered the foremost nation of antiquity.a

A CLASSICAL ESTIMATE OF CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY AND ASTROLOGY

“Here it will not be amiss to say something of the Chaldeans (as the Babylonians call them) and of their Antiquity, that nothing worth Remark may be omitted,” says Diodorus, as translated in 1700 by Booth.

“They being the most ancient Babylonians, hold the same station and dignity in the Common-wealth as the Egyptian Priests do in Egypt: For being deputed to Divine Offices, they spend all their Time in the study of Philosophy, and are especially famous for the Art of Astrology. They are mightily given to Divination, and foretel future Events, and imploy themselves either by Purifications, Sacrifices, or other Inchantments to avert Evils, or procure good Fortune and Success. They are skilful likewise in the Art of Divination, by the flying of Birds, and interpreting of Dreams and Prodigies: And are reputed as true Oracles (in declaring what will come to pass) by their exact and diligent viewing the Intrals of the Sacrifices. But they attain not to this Knowledge in the same manner as the Grecians do; for the Chaldeans learn it by Tradition from their Ancestors, the Son from the Father, who are all in the mean time free from all other publick Offices and Attendances; and because their Parents are their Tutors, they both learn every thing without Envy, and rely with more confidence upon the truth of what is taught them; and being train’d up in this Learning from their very Childhood, they become most famous Philosophers, (that Age being most capable of Learning, wherein they spend much of their time). But the Grecians for the most part come raw to this study, unfitted and unprepar’d, and are long before they attain to the Knowledge of this Philosophy: And after they have spent some small time in this Study, they are many times call’d off and forc’d to leave it, in order to get a Livelihood and Subsistence. And although some few do industriously apply themselves to Philosophy, yet for the sake of Gain, these very Men are opinionative, and ever and anon starting new and high Points, and never fix in the steps of their Ancestors. But the Barbarians keeping constantly close to the same thing, attain to a perfect and distinct Knowledge in every particular.

“But the Grecians cunningly catching at all Opportunities of Gain, make new Sects and Parties, and by their contrary Opinions wrangling and quarelling concerning the chiefest Points, lead their Scholars into a Maze; and being uncertain and doubtful what to pitch upon for certain truth, their Minds are fluctuating and in suspence all the days of their Lives, and unable to give a certain assent unto any thing. For if any Man will but examine the most eminent Sects of the Philosophers, he shall find them much differing among themselves, and even opposing one another in the most weighty parts of their Philosophy. But to return to the Chaldeans, they hold that[564] the World is eternal, which had neither any certain Beginning, nor shall have any End; but all agree, that all things are order’d, and this beautiful Fabrick is supported by a Divine Providence, and that the Motions of the Heavens are not perform’d by chance and of their own accord, but by a certain and determinate Will and Appointment of the Gods.

“Therefore from a long observation of the Stars, and an exact Knowledge of the motions and influences of every one of them, wherein they excel all others, they fortel many things that are to come to pass.

“They say that the Five Stars which some call Planets, but they Interpreters, are most worthy of Consideration, both for their motions and their remarkable influences, especially that which the Grecians call Saturn. The brightest of them all, and which often portends many and great Events, they call Sol, the other Four they name Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter, with our own Country Astrologers. They give the Name of Interpreters to these Stars, because these only by a peculiar Motion do portend things to come, and instead of Jupiters, do declare to Men before-hand the good-will of the Gods; whereas the other Stars (not being of the number of the Planets) have a constant ordinary motion. Future Events (they say) are pointed at sometimes by their Rising, and sometimes by their Setting, and at other times by their Colour, as may be experienc’d by those that will diligently observe it; sometimes foreshewing Hurricanes, at other times Tempestuous Rains, and then again exceeding Droughts. By these, they say, are often portended the appearance of Comets, Eclipses of the Sun and Moon, Earthquakes and all other the various Changes and remarkable effects in the Air, boding good and bad, not only to Nations in general, but to Kings and Private Persons in particular. Under the Course of these Planets, they say are Thirty Stars, which they call Counselling Gods, half of whom observe what is done under the Earth, and the other half take notice of the actions of Men upon the Earth, and what is transacted in the Heavens. Once every Ten Days space (they say) one of the highest Order of these Stars descends to them that are of the lowest, like a Messenger sent from them above; and then again another ascends from those below to them above, and that this is their constant natural motion to continue for ever. The chief of these Gods, they say, are Twelve in number, to each of which they attribute a Month, and one Sign of the Twelve in the Zodiack.

“Through these Twelve Signs the Sun, Moon, and the other Five Planets run their Course. The Sun in a Years time, and the Moon in the space of a Month. To every one of the Planets they assign their own proper Courses, which are perform’d variously in lesser or shorter time according as their several motions are quicker or slower. These Stars, they say, have a great influence both as to good and bad in Mens Nativities; and from the consideration of their several Natures, may be foreknown what will befal Men afterwards. As they foretold things to come to other Kings formerly, so they did to Alexander who conquer’d Darius, and to his Successors Antigonus and Seleucus Nicator; and accordingly things fell out as they declar’d; which we shall relate particularly hereafter in a more convenient time. They tell likewise private Men their Fortunes so certainly, that those who have found the thing true by Experience, have esteem’d it a Miracle, and above the reach of Man to perform. Out of the Circle of the Zodiack they describe Four and Twenty Stars, Twelve towards the North Pole, and as many to the South.

“Those which we see, they assign to the living; and the other that do not appear, they conceive are Constellations for the Dead; and they term them[565] Judges of all things. The Moon, they say, is in the lowest Orb; and being therefore next to the Earth (because she is so small,) she finishes her Course in a little time, not through the swiftness of her Motion, but the shortness of her Sphear. In that which they affirm (that she has but a borrow’d light, and that when she is eclips’d, it’s caus’d by the interposition of the shadow of the Earth) they agree with the Grecians.

“Their Rules and Notions concerning the Eclipses of the Sun are but weak and mean, which they dare not positively foretel, nor fix a certain time for them. They have likewise Opinions concerning the Earth peculiar to themselves, affirming it to resemble a Boat, and to be hollow, to prove which, and other things relating to the frame of the World, they abound in Arguments; but to give a particular Account of ’em, we conceive would be a thing foreign to our History. But this any Man may justly and truly say, That the Chaldeans far exceed all other Men in the Knowledge of Astrology, and have study’d it most of any other Art or Science: But the number of Years during which the Chaldeans say, those of their Profession have given themselves to the study of this natural Philosophy, is incredible; for when Alexander was in Asia, they reckon’d up Four Hundred and Seventy Thousand Years since they first began to observe the Motions of the Stars. But lest we should make too long a digression from our intended Design, let this which we have said concerning the Chaldeans suffice.”d

THE BABYLONIAN YEAR

The Babylonian year, according to Eduard Meyer, consisted of simple lunar months (twenty-nine or thirty days), which, as with the Greeks and the Mohammedans, was determined by the course of the moon itself.

To make this year coincide with the course of the sun, an extra month was intercalated; in olden times this seems to have been done after the first or the sixth month.

This year, with the names of its months, was adopted by the Jews at the time of the Exile, and is still in use with them. The commencement of their year (Nisan) falls at the time of the spring equinox. The Babylonians had no continuous chronology; they dated according to the years of the kings, or, rather, they marked the year according to any important event which took place in it. Thus we see dates like “on the 30th Adar in the Sixth year after the conquest of Nisin by King Rim-Sin.”

Later on in Babylon, and also in Assyria, they reckoned simply the years of the kings, from the day of their accession to the throne. The remainder of the year, in the course of which the predecessor had died, was therefore considered the first part of the first year of the new reign, and was very often called “the beginning of the reign” of the king in question.

Chronological calculations were reckoned from the same starting-point as in Egypt. They reckon the calendar year in which a king comes to the throne as his first year, and hence his death takes place in the first year of his successor. This is the method of the Ptolemaic canon, one of the most important chronological monuments of antiquity. It is the list beginning with Nabonassar (about 747 B.C.) of the native and Persian kings of Babylonia, to which the Egyptian rulers up to Alexander are added. It is an addition to the astronomical work of Ptolemy, and was intended to throw light on the passages relating to the Babylonian, and later on to the Alexandrian chronological methods. It is authentic, and is confirmed by the monuments. Yet, in using the same, it must be recollected that all dates of[566] the Egyptian “vague” year (and the Egyptian months) are reduced. Therefore the first year of the Nabonassar era begins on the 1st Tehuti, the 26th February, 747 B.C.

In Assyria there is also a second and far more common form of specifying the years. Since a very early date (as far back as the fourteenth century) it was customary to name the year after some high official. The year, as such, is called limmu, “eponymic year.” Of course, they had continuous lists of these eponyms; and we have recovered several fragments. The lists for the years 893 to 666 are complete, and with fragments we can go still farther back. The kings frequently used this system, and private persons regularly used this eponym.

Some copies of the lists contain accounts of the changes of reigns, and give short statements of important internal and external events of the particular years. Thus an eclipse of the sun June 15, 763 B.C., mentioned therein can be astronomically fixed, and the dates arrived at thereby concur exactly with the accounts of the Ptolemaic canon. The chronological history of this epoch is therefore perfectly determined.e

THE BABYLONIAN DAY AND ITS DIVISION INTO HOURS

This being the Babylonian method of reckoning dates, it is interesting to note on what plan they subdivided the day. Investigations were made in this line by that indefatigable Irishman, Edward Hincks, from whose article “On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time,” in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, we quote.a

I begin with the day and its divisions.

Our knowledge on this subject is mainly derived from a tablet in the British Museum, marked K. 15. A paper of mine was read before the Royal Irish Academy in 1854, and was published in the twenty-third volume of the Transactions in which this tablet was discussed. As that paper contained some slight philological errors, I will here repeat the substance of it, correcting those errors.

I now translate the inscription on the Tablet as follows, omitting the customary benedictory formula. “On the sixth day of the month Nisan the day and the night are equal; six kazabs [kashbu] are the day; six kazabs [kashbu] are the night.” It is evident that this inscription records the observation of an equinox; and I will return to the consideration of it with that view. At present I will only remark that it points to a double division of the day, or Nycthemeron; viz., the first into the day properly so called, and the night; which were in this instance equal, though not generally so; the second into twelve equal kazabs [kashbu].

I proceed to the second division of the day into twelve kazabs [kashbu]. Each of these was equivalent, putting out of sight errors of observation, to two hours of mean solar time, such as we use in ordinary life. The word kazab [kashbu] is from a Hebrew root meaning “to fail,” which is applied to streams that run dry. This suggests the primary signification, “runnings out,” namely, of the water which had been poured into a vessel with a small hole in the bottom. The Babylonians measured time by clepsydræ, which, when they had been filled, would be emptied in two hours of mean time. Such clepsydræ would maintain a sufficiently accurate division of the day into twelve kazabs [kashbu] if the first were set to run at apparent noon, the second when the first had run out, and so on till the thirteenth, which would[567] be set to run at the next apparent noon, whether the twelfth was just running out, or had already run out, or had still a little water in it.

The kazab [kashbu] is mentioned as an ordinary measure of time in more than one passage. The distance from the mainland to an island in the Persian Gulf is said to be a voyage of thirty kazabs [kashbu] (Botta, 41. 48), just as that from Cyprus to Syria is said to be one of seven days (Botta, 38. 41). Also, in Rawlinson, 42. 13, Sennacherib speaks of slaughtering his enemies for the space of a journey or march of two kazabs [kashbu]. This use of the word seems to me a positive proof that the clepsydræ was in use among the Assyrians and Babylonians generally, and was not confined to the astronomers.

There does not appear to me any reason to suppose that a division of the day from sunrise to sunset into twelve hours, varying in length according to the season of the year, and again of the night, from sunset to sunrise into twelve similar hours, was ever known to the Babylonians. Such a division was in use among the Egyptians, and was adopted from them by the Greeks, but the Babylonians and Assyrians knew nothing of it. I may here observe that some modern writers have committed a strange mistake in supposing the clepsydræ to have been invented so late as the third century before Christ and at Alexandria. These writers have confounded two totally different things; viz., the original invention of the clepsydræ marking mean solar time, which goes back to remote antiquity, and is almost certainly due to the Babylonians, and the adaptation of the clepsydræ to the seasonable (καιρικαὶ) hours of the Egyptians and Greeks, which was accomplished at the time and place which these writers mention. I have met with no subdivisions of the kazab [kashbu], and I much doubt whether the Babylonians had any means of marking such.f

ASSYRIAN SCIENCE

The exact sciences were cultivated in Assyria from the earliest times, nor had natural sciences been neglected. Zoology, botany, mineralogy are largely represented in the library of Nineveh, and as all these tablets contain a Sumerian as well as the equivalent Assyrian text, we are justified in believing that the Ninevites, in this respect, still followed the traditions of their predecessors.

We find lists of animals arranged in a certain order which indicates an attempt at classification; thus the dog, lion, and wolf are in the same category, whilst the ox, sheep, and goat form another. In the enumeration of the different animals, there is a very evident design of establishing genera and families, and of distinguishing species. Thus we have a family comprising the great Carnivora: the dog, lion, and wolf; then we have different species in the dog family—such as the dog itself, the domestic dog, the coursing dog, the small dog, the dog of Elam, etc. The scientific side of this classification is revealed by an easily recognised circumstance; thus one finds after the common name a special nomenclature, which belongs to a scientific classification with which the Assyrians seem to have been familiar.

Among the birds similar attempts at classification are evident. Birds of rapid flight, sea-birds, or marsh birds are differentiated. Insects form a very numerous class; we see an entire family whose species are differentiated according as they attack plants, animals, clothing, or wood. Vegetables seem to be classified according to their usefulness, or the service that industry can make of them. One tablet enumerates the uses to which wood can be[568] put, according to its adaptability, for the timber-work of palaces, the construction of vessels, the making of carts, implements of husbandry, or even furniture. Minerals occupy a long series in these tablets. They are classed according to their qualities, gold and silver forming a division apart; precious stones form still another, but there is nothing to indicate on what basis a classification would be established.

If we pass from the natural sciences to geography, we find the latter in a synthetic and fairly confused state. Nevertheless several lists give us a series of the names of towns, rivers, and mountains, arranged according to their geographical disposition, as we can easily prove. Sometimes the data are of a practical character, and names are followed by mention of natural or industrial products of localities, their revenue taxes, or tributes. But the science, par excellence, which was especially cultivated in Assyria, and which the learned men of Asshurbanapal connected with the greatest care with antique Chaldean traditions, was astronomy.

This science was not indeed born at Nineveh; the Greeks teach us that astronomical observations were first made in lower Chaldea 1903 years before Alexander, and consequently 2226 years before Christ. Whatever the value of this date may be, the tradition of this origin is found in the works of the Assyrians, who constantly refer to the observations of their predecessors. Asshurbanapal had sent these learned men to the old schools of Mesopotamia, Ur, Sippar, Agade, Babylon; there to imbibe the elements of the science which was the glory of the southern empire. In the seventh century before our era, observations were carried on at Nineveh. At this date the fixed stars had long been distinguished from the planets; the sidereal revolutions, the divisions of the year, the course of the sun in the different constellations of the zodiac, periodic return of eclipses, and even the precession of the equinoxes, had been calculated. These achievements imply long and conscientious observation, a special intelligence to undertake them, and simple methods of rigorous calculation.

We are ignorant as to the nature of the instruments with which the Assyrio-Chaldeans could observe the stars. The chances of error in observations by the naked eye are evidently very great, and errors can only be rectified by multiplied operations and the most minute calculations. It is known that the determining of the periodicity of the moon’s eclipses rests on a knowledge of the cycle of 223 lunations which bring back the same eclipses periodically. It is certain that the Assyrio-Chaldeans must have also known another cycle of 22,325 lunations equalling 1805 tropical years plus 8 days, or 1805 Julian years of 365¼ days; after which the eclipses return with still greater precision in the same order. How long did it take the human mind to observe and understand a sufficient number of lunations so as to combine the data they afforded and deduct the law that Meton formulated and to which he has given his name?

In regard to eclipses of the sun, the cycle is so very much greater that the beginnings of the observations on which the calculations of their periodicity would rest, would take us back to a period which is quite beyond the limits of the historic age. Diogenes Laertius estimates it as 48,863 years. During that time 373 eclipses of the moon and 832 eclipses of the sun had been observed. When they turned their attention to the calculations resulting from these observations the Assyrio-Chaldeans were marvellously helped by their system of notation. Their numerical system lent itself with ease to the most complicated of calculations. We must content ourselves with stating the results. As we were saying a minute ago, the observations were[569] carried on under Asshurbanapal; the king sent astronomers to different points to study celestial phenomena, and the results of their labours were sent him. Here are the terms in which these reports were expressed:

“To the King, my Lord, his humble servant Ishtar-iddin-apal, chief astronomer of the town of Arbela writes this: Peace and happiness to the king my master and may he long prosper.

“On the 29th day, I observed the node of the moon, the clouds obscured the field of observation, and we could not see the moon.

“In the month of Sebat (January) the 1st day during the year Bel-haran-saduya (648 B.C.).”

The result of this mission was not satisfactory. The eclipse had been predicted, but although the state of the atmosphere did not allow of observation, the attesting of this failure proves the care with which every circumstance that could serve to explain the phenomenon was noted. Here is an observation which was entirely successful:

“To the director of observations my Lord, his humble servant Nabu-shum-iddin, Great Astronomer of Nineveh writes this: May Nabu and Marduk be propitious to the director of these observations, my Lord.

“The 15th day we observed the node of the moon, and the moon was eclipsed.”

Here is a more complicated observation:

“To the king, my Lord, may the Gods Nabu and Marduk be propitious, may the great gods grant to the king, my master, long life, the benefits of the flesh and satisfaction of the heart.

“The 27th day the moon disappeared; the 28th 29th and 30th day we continually observed the node of the obscuring sun. The eclipse did not take place. The 1st day (of the following month) we saw the moon during the first day of the month Tammuz (June) above the star Mercury of which I have previously sent an observation to the king my master. In its course during the day of Anu, around the shepherd star (the planet Venus), it was seen declining: on account of rain the horns were not very distinctly visible, and so it was in its whole course. The day Anu I sent the observation of its conjunction, to the king my master. It was prolonged and was visible above the star of the Chariot in its course during the day of Baal; it disappeared towards the star of the Chariot.

“To the King, my Lord, peace and happiness.”

The discovery of the precession of the equinoxes is generally attributed to Hipparchus. It was he, indeed, who taught this fact to the Greeks, and he estimated its yearly amount as from 36 to 39 seconds; but it is certain that he learned about it in Chaldea, and that he obtained the elements of his calculations from the astronomical observations made on the lower Euphrates. All the astronomical knowledge of the Ninevite savants had the same point of origin.

Two thousand years before our era, from the time of a king of Agade called Sharrukin (Shargani-shar-ali), and who is usually known as Sargon I (the Ancient), the precession of the equinoxes was an observed and calculated fact, since it had already brought sufficient disturbance into the calendar to make a corrective element necessary. Sargon had given a brilliancy to his century which the learned men of Nineveh only echoed. In his time there was a library at Agade, the importance of which we can judge by the fragments which were preserved at Nineveh. We are certain that at these remote times the great divisions of the uranographic chart were already determined upon. Fixed stars were designated according to the[570] different groups or constellations which were known by the names they have retained to this day.

Outside these fixed stars the signs of the zodiac were perfectly determined in that portion of the celestial vault which the texts designate by the name of harranu (the way), that is to say, the way of the stars. These stars were the planets. The Chaldeans knew of seven, and they were thus known to them: Shamash, the sun; Sin, the moon; Alap-Shamash, Saturn; Rus, Jupiter; Ashbat, Venus; Sulpa-sadu, Mars; Nivit-Anu, Mercury. The Ninevite savants borrowed their astronomical knowledge from the Chaldeans; they made use of the calendar as it was transmitted to them, and as such it has been used by all nations from the remotest times up to the present day.

The Assyrian year was composed of twelve lunar months. It began with the new moon preceding the vernal equinox. A well-known tablet thus fixes the day of the equinoxes: “At the sixth day of the month of Nisan (March) the days and nights are equal (and comprise), six kashbu for the day and six kashbu for the night. May Nabu and Marduk be propitious to the King, my Lord.”

To correct the error resulting from the difference between the lunar and solar year, a supplementary month was intercalated, the length of which necessarily varied with circumstances. The Ninevite tablets offer us calendars arranged in conformity with the different exigencies of life. Some are purely scientific, and show us the divisions of the year into days, months, and seasons. Others are formed to meet the needs of religion, and tell us, by the day, the feasts consecrated to divinities invoked or honoured by special ceremonies. Others seem to take current superstitions into account; thus days are marked by a particular sign, according as they are considered propitious or disastrous. We see tables constructed to indicate the influence of the stars on each day of the year, with a mention of appropriate prayers, to propitiate favourable auguries and ward off those which are fatal.

The importance of these last documents must not be exaggerated; they are related to superstitions common to all ages and lands; and, in the ancient East, as everywhere else, these beliefs merely represent one of the most curious, but the least interesting phases of the aberrations of the human mind.g

FOOTNOTES

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APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

It is a curious paradox that our knowledge of this oldest civilisation should be the very newest and most novel record with which present-day history has to deal. The Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians, of whose accomplishments we speak so confidently to-day, lived out their national life, and vanished from the earth, as nations, mostly before civilisation had its dawning in Europe; and for two thousand years they were but a reminiscence.

It was reserved for nineteenth century investigators literally to dig from the earth their lost records, and to read the secrets of their forgotten history. Marvellous secrets they were, as we shall see; but before we turn to them, it will be of interest to recall the reminiscences that did service as the history of these wonderful peoples for so many centuries. In a few extracts we may set forth the substance of all that the world remembered of that marvellous civilisation from the days of Herodotus and Diodorus till the middle of the nineteenth century. A mixture of fact and fable, it still has absorbing interest, the more so that we may now compare it with the surer records brought to light in our own time. Aside from their intrinsic interest, the classical records have, in this regard, a unique importance.

As to the precise classical authorities in question, we have already become acquainted with Diodorus and Ælianus in the earlier portion of this work. Another author we shall now have occasion to quote is Berosus. As to this author and the exact status of his work, we cannot do better than quote the following critical estimate from the Babylone et la Chaldée of Joachim Menant.

“Berosus came of a priestly family and was born in Babylon, about 330 B.C. He himself is authority for the information that he was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. According to Tatian, he is the most learned of all Asiatic historians. He was deeply versed in the ancient traditions of[572] his country and taught them to the Greeks, through whom they have come down to us. Vitruvius informs us that he left Babylon and went to live on the island of Cos, where he opened a school of astrology. He invented, or at least introduced among the Greeks, a particular kind of time-keeping. There still exist fragments of astrological works to which Berosus has attached his name, and owing to the special interests of the writers who have borrowed from his works, the fame of the astrologer perhaps outshines that of the historian. Pliny (VII. 37) declares that the Athenians erected a golden-tongued statue to him in the Gymnasium, on account of his wonderful predictions.

“He wrote in Greek, about 280 B.C., a history of ancient Chaldea and dedicated it to Antiochus Soter. The work consisted of three volumes, of which we possess now but a few excerpts preserved in the chronicles of several historiographers who have lived at different periods and whom it may be well to mention. First of all there is Flavius Josephus, the great historian of the Jews, born at Jerusalem 33 A.D.; then there are St. Clement, the Alexandrian catechist (born early in the second century A.D., died 217), Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea (author of the Symbol of Nice, who lived from 267 to 338), and finally, George Syncellus (so called from the office he filled under the Bishop of Constantinople, and who died about the year 800). These writers took from Berosus only just what was needed for their purposes, and none in fact seems to have been personally acquainted with the work of the learned Chaldean.

“For instance, Syncellus, whose writings show marks of haste and are by no means free from error, borrows his quotations from Eusebius, whom he often pretends to correct. Eusebius seems to be indebted to Julius Africanus, who wrote in the third century of our era, and the latter in turn mentions his obligation to Alexander Polyhistor, who flourished twenty-five years before Christ. Now Polyhistor takes his references from Apollodorus, who lived some years before. Josephus in all probability used Alexander Polyhistor as his source, although he does not say so. Clement of Alexandria had at his elbow the works of King Juba of Mauritania, who reigned about 30 B.C., and who seems to have taken his material, unfortunately too limited in amount, from the very works of Berosus, in whom he placed the utmost confidence.

“One thing is certain, the original text of Berosus in passing through so many hands and suffering condensation and mutilation must have been considerably altered.

“Berosus had free access to those famous clay-tablet libraries which Pliny describes and whose importance modern research has revealed. As at Nineveh, there were at Babylon, Borsippa, Orchoë [Erech], and in the large cities of Chaldea, archives which contained the national traditions to which the Chaldean priest was obliged to resort.

“In the days of Berosus the writings in these archives were understood not only in Babylon, but throughout western Asia. The Assyrio-Chaldean language was still written in cuneiform characters till the time of the Seleucidæ and even during the first century B.C. Berosus was thus enabled to consult these precious sources, and we know that he went to them. Already in the priceless débris of these curious archives, fragments in corroboration of Berosus have been discovered, and these acquisitions only make us regret the more what is irrevocably lost.”

We shall now take up some of the portions of Berosus’ history transcribed by later historiographers.a

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THE CREATION AND THE FLOOD, DESCRIBED BY POLYHISTOR

Berosus, in the first book of his history of Babylonia, informs us that he lived in the age of Alexander, the son of Philip. And he mentions that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon with the greatest care, comprehending a period of about fifteen myriads of years; and that these writings contained histories of the heavens and of the sea; of the birth of mankind; and of the kings, and of the memorable actions which they had achieved.

And in the first place he describes Babylonia as a country situated between the Tigris and the Euphrates; that it abounded with wheat and barley, and ocrus, and sesame; and that in the lakes were produced the roots called gongæ, which are fit for food, and in respect for nutriment similar to barley. That there were also palm trees and apples, and a variety of fruits; fish also and birds, both those which are merely of flight, and those which frequent the lakes. He adds, that those parts of the country which bordered upon Arabia were without water and barren; but that the parts which lay on the other side were both hilly and fertile.

At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldea, and lived in a lawless manner, like the beasts of the field.

In the first year there appeared from that part of the Erythræan Sea [the Persian Gulf] which borders upon Babylonia, an animal destitute of reason, by name Oannes [perhaps the same as Anu], whose whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish; that under the fish’s head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail. His voice, too, and language, was articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved even to this day.

This Being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanise their lives. From that time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions.[574] And when the sun had set, this Being, Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes, of which Berosus proposes to give an account when he comes to the history of the kings. Moreover, Oannes wrote concerning the generation of mankind, and of their civil policy; and the following is the purport of what he said:

“There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced of a twofold principle. There appeared men, some of whom were furnished with two wings, others with four, and with two faces. They had one body but two heads: the one that of a man, the other of a woman; likewise in their several organs, they were both male and female. Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats; some had horses’ feet; while others united the hind quarters of a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise were bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with fourfold bodies, terminated in their extremities with the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every species of animal. In addition to these, fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other monstrous animals, which assumed each other’s shape and countenance. Of all which were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon.

“The person who was believed to have presided over them, was a woman named Omoroca [a Greek form of the Aramaic word ’Amqia, “the ocean”]; which in the Chaldean language is Thalath; in Greek, Thalassa, the sea; but which might equally be interpreted the Moon. All things being in this situation, Belus came, and cut the woman asunder: and of one half of her he formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens; and at the same time destroyed the animals within her. All this (he says) was an allegorical description of nature. For, the whole universe consisting of moisture, and animals being continually generated therein, the deity above mentioned took off his own head: upon which the other gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth; and from thence were formed men. On this account it is that they are rational, and partake of divine knowledge.

“This Belus, by whom they signify Jupiter, divided the darkness, and separated the Heavens from the Earth, and reduced the universe to order. But the animals, not being able to bear the prevalence of light, died. Belus, upon this, seeing a vast space unoccupied, though by nature fruitful, commanded one of the gods to take off his head, and to mix the blood with the earth; and from thence to form other men and animals, which should be capable of bearing the air. Belus formed also the stars, and the sun, and the moon, and the five planets.”

(Such, according to Alexander Polyhistor, is the account which Berosus gives in his first book. In the second book was contained the history of the ten kings of the Chaldeans, and the periods of the continuance of each reign, which consisted collectively of 120 sars, or 432,000 years; reaching to the time of the Deluge. For Alexander, enumerating the kings from the writings of the Chaldeans, after Ardates the IXth, proceeds to the Xth, who is called by them Xisuthrus, in this manner:)

After the death of Ardates, his son Xisuthrus reigned 18 sars. In his time happened a great Deluge; the history of which is thus described. The Deity, Cronus, appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of the month Dæsius [or Dæsia, i.e. May and June] there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined[575] him to write a history of the beginning, procedure, and conclusion of all things; and bury it in the city of the Sun at Sippara; and to build a vessel, and to take with him into it his friends and relations; and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having asked the Deity, whither he was to sail, he was answered, “To the Gods”: upon which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. He then obeyed the divine admonition: and built a vessel five stadia in length and two in breadth. Into this he put everything which he had prepared; and last of all conveyed into it his wife, his children, and his friends.

After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel, which, not finding any food, nor any place whereupon they might rest their feet, returned to him again. After an interval of some days he sent them forth a second time; and they now returned with their feet tinged with mud. He made a trial a third time with these birds; but they returned to him no more: from whence he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. He therefore made an opening in the vessel, and upon looking out found that it was stranded upon the side of some mountain; upon which he immediately quitted it with his wife, his daughter, and the pilot. Xisuthrus then paid his adoration to the earth: and having constructed an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods, and, with those who had come out of the vessel with him, disappeared.

They who remained within, finding that their companions did not return, quitted the vessel with many lamentations, and called continually on the name of Xisuthrus. Him they saw no more; but they could distinguish his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them to pay due regard to religion; and likewise informed them that it was on account of his piety that he was translated to live with the gods; that his wife and daughter, and the pilot, had obtained the same honour. To this he added, that they should return to Babylonia; and, as it was ordained, search for the writings at Sippara, which they were to make known to all mankind: moreover, that the place wherein they then were, was the land of Armenia [in the Hebrew, Ararat]. The rest having heard these words, offered sacrifices to the gods; and, taking a circuit, journeyed towards Babylonia.

The vessel being thus stranded in Armenia, some part of it yet remains in the Corcyræan [or Gordyæan] Mountains of Armenia; and the people scrape off the bitumen, with which it had been outwardly coated, and make use of it by way of an alexipharmic and amulet. And when they returned to Babylon, and had found the writings at Sippara, they built cities, and erected temples: and Babylon was thus inhabited again.

OTHER CLASSICAL FRAGMENTS

Of the Chaldean Kings

This is the history which Berosus has transmitted to us. He tells us that the first king was Alorus [or Ur, the Babylonian deity] of Babylon, a Chaldean: he reigned ten sars: and afterwards Alaparus, and Amelon, who came from Pantibiblon [Greek form of Sippara]: then Ammenon the Chaldean, in whose time appeared the Musarus Oannes, the Annedotus from the Erythræan Sea. (But Alexander Polyhistor, anticipating the event, has said that he appeared in the first year; but Apollodorus says that it was[576] after forty sars; Abydenus, however, makes the second Annedotus appear after twenty-six sars.) Then succeeded Megalarus from the city of Pantibiblon; and he reigned eighteen sars: and after him Daonus, the shepherd from Pantibiblon, reigned ten sars; in his time (he says) appeared again from the Erythræan Sea a fourth Annedotus, having the same form with those above, the shape of a fish blended with that of a man. Then reigned Euedorachus, from Pantibiblon, for the term of eighteen sars; in his days there appeared another personage from the Erythræan Sea like the former, having the same complicated form between a fish and a man, whose name was Odacon. (All these, says Apollodorus, related particularly and circumstantially whatever Oannes had informed them of: concerning these, Abydenus has made no mention.) Then reigned Amempsinus, a Chaldean from Laranchæ [or Larissa]; and he, being the eighth in order, reigned ten sars. Then reigned Otiartes, a Chaldean, from Laranchæ; and he reigned eight sars. And upon the death of Otiartes, his son Xisuthrus reigned eighteen sars: in his time happened the great Deluge. So that the sum of all the kings is ten; and the term which they collectively reigned was a hundred and twenty sars. [From Eusebius.]

Of the Chaldean Kings and the Deluge

So much concerning the wisdom of the Chaldeans.

It is said that the first king of the country was Alorus, and that he gave out a report that God had appointed him to be the Shepherd of the people: he reigned ten sars: now a sar is esteemed to be three thousand six hundred years; a ner six hundred; and a sos sixty.

After him Alaparus reigned three sars: to him succeeded Amillarus from the city of Pantibiblon, who reigned thirteen sars: in his time came up from the sea a second Annedotus, a semi-demon very similar in his form to Oannes: after Amillarus reigned Ammenon twelve sars, who was of the city of Pantibiblon: then Megalarus of the same place reigned eighteen sars: then Daos, the shepherd, governed for the space of ten sars, he was of Pantibiblon [Sippara]; in his time four double-shaped personages came up out of the sea to land, whose names were Euedocus, Eneugamus, Eneuboulus, and Anementus: afterwards in the time of Euedoreschus appeared another Anodaphus. After these reigned other kings, and, last of all, Sisithrus [Xisuthrus]: so that in the whole the number amounted to ten kings, and the term of their reigns to an hundred and twenty sars. (And, among other things not irrelative to the subject, he continues thus concerning the Deluge): After Euedorechus some others reigned and then Sisithrus. To him the deity Cronus foretold that on the fifteenth day of the month Dæsius there would be a deluge of rain: and he commanded him to deposit all the writings whatever which were in his possession in the city of the Sun in Sippara. Sisithrus, when he had complied with these commands, sailed immediately to Armenia, and was presently inspired by God. Upon the third day after the cessation of the rain Sisithrus sent out birds, by way of experiment, that he might judge whether the flood had subsided. But the birds, passing over an unbounded sea, without finding any place of rest, returned again to Sisithrus. This he repeated with other birds. And when upon the third trial he succeeded, for the birds then returned with their feet stained with mud, the gods translated him from among men. With respect to the vessel, which yet remains in Armenia, it is a custom of the inhabitants to form bracelets and amulets of its wood. [From Eusebius.]

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Of the Tower of Babel

They say that the first inhabitants of the earth, glorying in their own strength and size, and despising the gods, undertook to raise a tower whose top should reach the sky in the place in which Babylon now stands: but when it approached the heaven, the winds assisted the gods, and overthrew the work upon its contrivers: and its ruins are said to be at Babylon: and the gods introduced a diversity of tongues among men, who till that time had all spoken the same language: and a war arose between Cronus and Titan. The place in which they built the tower is now called Babylon, on account of the confusion of the tongues; for confusion is by the Hebrews called Babel.[37] [From Eusebius.]

Of Abraham [?]

After the Deluge, in the tenth generation, was a certain man among the Chaldeans renowned for his justice and great exploits, and for his skill in the celestial sciences. [From Eusebius.]

Of Nabonassar

From the reign of Nabonassar only are the Chaldeans (from whom the Greek mathematicians copy) accurately acquainted with the heavenly motions: for Nabonassar collected all the mementos of the kings prior to himself, and destroyed them, that the enumeration of the Chaldean kings might commence with him. [From Syncellus.]

Of the Destruction of the Jewish Temple

He (Nabopolassar) sent his son Nebuchadrezzar with a great army against Egypt, and against Judea, upon his being informed that they had revolted from him; and by that means he subdued them all, and set fire to the temple that was at Jerusalem; and removed our people entirely out of their own country, and transferred them to Babylon, and our city remained in a state of desolation during the interval of seventy years, until the days of Cyrus, king of Persia. (He then says, that) this Babylonian king conquered Egypt, and Syria, and Phœnicia, and Arabia, and exceeded in his exploits all that had reigned before him in Babylon and Chaldea. [From Josephus.]

Of Nebuchadrezzar

When Nabopolassar, his (Nebuchadrezzar’s) father, heard that the governor, whom he had set over Egypt and the provinces of Cœle-Syria and Phœnicia, had revolted, he was determined to punish his delinquencies, and for that purpose entrusted part of his army to his son Nebuchadrezzar, who was then of mature age, and sent him forth against the rebel: and Nebuchadrezzar engaged and overcame him, and reduced the country again under his dominion. And it came to pass that his father, Nabopolassar, was seized with a disorder which proved fatal, and he died in the city of Babylon, after he had reigned nine and twenty years.

Nebuchadrezzar, as soon as he had received intelligence of his father’s death, set in order the affairs of Egypt and the other countries, and committed[578] to some of his faithful officers the captives he had taken from the Jews, and Phœnicians, and Syrians, and the nations belonging to Egypt, that they might conduct them with that part of the forces which had heavy armour, together with the rest of his baggage, to Babylonia: in the meantime with a few attendants he hastily crossed the desert to Babylon. When he arrived there he found that his affairs had been faithfully conducted by the Chaldeans, and that the principal person among them had preserved the kingdom for him: and he accordingly obtained possession of all his father’s dominions. And he distributed the captives in colonies in the most proper places in Babylonia: and adorned the temple of Belus, and the other temples, in a sumptuous and pious manner, out of the spoils which he had taken in this war. He also rebuilt the old city, and added another to it on the outside, and so far completed Babylon that none who might besiege it afterwards should have it in their power to divert the river so as to facilitate an entrance into it: and he effected this by building three walls about the inner city, and three about the outer. Some of these walls he built of burnt brick and bitumen, and some of brick only. When he had thus admirably fortified the city, and had magnificently adorned the gates, he added also a new palace to those in which his forefathers had dwelt, adjoining them, but exceeding them in height and splendour. Any attempt to describe it would be tedious: yet notwithstanding its prodigious size and magnificence, it was finished within fifteen days. In this palace he erected very high walks, supported by stone pillars; and by planting what was called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to gratify his queen [Amytis], because she had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation. [From Josephus.]

Of the Chaldean Kings after Nebuchadrezzar

Nebuchadrezzar, whilst he was engaged in building the above-mentioned wall, fell sick, and died after he had reigned forty-three years; whereupon his son Evil-merodachus succeeded him in his kingdom. His government, however, was conducted in an illegal and improper manner, and he fell a victim to a conspiracy which was formed against his life by Neriglissorus, his sister’s husband, after he had reigned about two years.

Upon his death Neriglissorus, the chief of the conspirators, obtained possession of the kingdom, and reigned four years.

He was succeeded by his son Labarosoarchodus [Labashi-Marduk], who was but a child, and reigned nine months; for his misconduct he was seized by conspirators, and put to death by torture.

After his death, the conspirators assembled, and by common consent placed the crown upon the head of Nabonidus, a man of Babylon, and one of the leaders of the insurrection. It was in this reign that the walls of the city of Babylon which defend the banks of the river were curiously built with burnt brick and bitumen.

In the seventeenth year of the reign of Nabonidus, Cyrus came out of Persia with a great army, and, having conquered all the rest of Asia, advanced hastily into the country of Babylonia. As soon as Nabonidus perceived he was advancing to attack him, he assembled his forces and opposed him, but was defeated, and fled with a few of his adherents, and was shut up in the city of Borsippus. Upon this Cyrus took Babylon, and gave orders that the outer walls should be demolished, because the city appeared of such strength as to render a siege almost impracticable. From thence he marched to Borsippus[579] to besiege Nabonidus; but Nabonidus delivered himself into his hands without holding out the place: he was therefore kindly treated by Cyrus, who provided him with an establishment in Carmania, but sent him out of Babylonia. Nabonidus accordingly spent the remainder of his life in that country, where he died. [From Josephus.[38]]

Of the Feast of Sacea

Berosus, in the first book of his Babylonian history, says: That in the eleventh month, called Loos [July], is celebrated in Babylon the feast of Sacea for five days, in which it is the custom that the masters should obey their domestics, one of whom is led round the house, clothed in a royal garment, and him they call Zoganes. [From Athenæus.]

A Fragment of Megasthenes Concerning Nebuchadrezzar

Abydenus, in his history of the Assyrians, has preserved the following fragment of Megasthenes, who says: That Nabucodrosorus [Nebuchadrezzar], having become more powerful than Hercules, invaded Libya and Iberia [Spain], and when he had rendered them tributary, he extended his conquests over the inhabitants of the shores upon the right of the sea. It is, moreover, related by the Chaldeans that as he went up into his palace he was possessed by some god; and he cried out and said:

“Oh! Babylonians, I, Nabucodrosorus, foretell unto you a calamity which must shortly come to pass, which neither Belus, my ancestor, nor his queen Beltis, have power to persuade the Fates to turn away. A Persian mule shall come, and by the assistance of your gods shall impose upon you the yoke of slavery; the author of which shall be a Mede, the vainglory of Assyria. Before he should thus betray my subjects, O! that some sea or whirlpool might receive him, and his memory be blotted out forever; or that he might be cast out to wander through some desert where there are neither cities nor the trace of men, a solitary exile among rocks and caverns, where beasts and birds alone abide. But for me, before he shall have conceived these mischiefs in his mind a happier end will be provided.”

When he had thus prophesied, he expired, and was succeeded by his son Evilmaruchus [Evil-merodach], who was slain by his kinsman Neriglisares; and Neriglisares left Labassoarascus his son; and when he also had suffered death by violence, they crowned Nabannidochus [Nabonidus], who had no connection with the royal family; and in his reign Cyrus took Babylon, and granted him a principality in Carmania.

And concerning the rebuilding of Babylon by Nabuchodonosor, he [Megasthenes] writes thus: It is said that from the beginning all things were water, called the sea; that Belus caused this state of things to cease, and appointed to each its proper place; and he surrounded Babylon with a wall; but in process of time this wall disappeared; and Nabuchodonosor walled it in again, and it remained so with its brazen gates until the time of the Macedonian conquest. And after other things he [Megasthenes] says: Nabuchodonosor having succeeded to the kingdom, built the walls of Babylon in a triple circuit in fifteen days; and he turned the river Armacale,[580] a branch of the Euphrates, and the Acracanus; and above the city of Sippara he dug a receptacle for the waters, whose perimeter was forty parasangs and whose depth was twenty cubits; and he placed gates at the entrance thereof, by opening which they irrigated the plains, and these they called echetognomones (sluices); and he constructed dikes against the eruptions of the Erythræan Sea, and built the city of Teredon to check the incursions of the Arabs; and he adorned the palaces with trees, calling them hanging gardens. [From Abydenus.]b

NINUS AND SEMIRAMIS

The reader, having already passed in review the chief events of Mesopotamian history, is aware that the modern historian knows nothing of a King Ninus, or of any warlike female ruler of Assyria. Nevertheless this story of Diodorus—the only long account of Assyrian affairs that has come down to us from antiquity—has true historical value, as showing the manner of tradition that may be woven about the half-remembered facts of history. The account has interest for yet another reason: it is a record that passed current as the authentic history of Assyria for some eighteen hundred years—from classical times till after the middle of the nineteenth century.a

Asia was anciently govern’d, says Diodorus, by its own Native Kings, of whom there’s no History extant, either as to any memorable Actions they perform’d, or so much as to their Names.

Ninus is the First King of Assyria that is recorded in History; he perform’d many great and noble Actions; of whom we have design’d to set forth something particularly.

He was naturally of a Warlike Disposition, and very ambitious of Honour and Glory, and therefore caus’d the strongest of his Young Men to be train’d up in Martial Discipline, and by long and continual Exercise inur’d them readily to undergo all the Toyls and Hazards of War.

Having therefore rais’d a gallant Army, he made a League with Arieus King of Arabia, that was at that time full of strong and valiant Men. For that Nation are constant Lovers of Liberty, never upon any Terms admitting of any Foreign Prince: And therefore neither the Persian, nor the Macedonian Kings after them, (though they were most powerful in Arms) were ever able to conquer them. For Arabia being partly Desert, and partly parcht up for want of Water (unless it be in some secret Wells and Pits known only to the Inhabitants) cannot be subdu’d by any Foreign Force.

Ninus therefore, the Assyrian King, with the Prince of Arabia his Assistant, with a numerous Army, invaded the Babylonians, then next bordering upon him: For the Babylon that is now, was not built at that time; but the Province of Babylon had in it then many other considerable Cities, whose Inhabitants he easily subdu’d, (being rude and unexpert in Matters of War,) and impos’d upon them a Yearly Tribute; but carried away the King with all his Children Prisoners, and after put them to Death. Afterwards he entered Armenia with a great Army, and having overthrown some Cities, he struck Terror into the rest, and thereupon their King Barzanus seeing himself unable to deal with him, met him with many rich Presents, and submitted himself; whom Ninus out of his generous disposition, courteously receiv’d, and gave him the Kingdom of Armenia, upon condition he should be his Friend for the future, and supply him with Men and Provision for his Wars as he should have occasion.

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Being thus strengthen’d, he invaded Media, whose King Pharnus coming out against him with a mighty Army, was utterly routed, and lost most of his Men, and was taken Prisoner with his Wife and Seven Children, and afterwards Crucified.

Ninus being thus successful and prosperous, his Ambition rose the higher, and his desire most ardent to conquer all in Asia, which lay between Tanais and Nile; (so far does Prosperity and Excess in getting much, inflame the Desire to gain and compass more). In order hereunto, he made one of his Friends Governor of the Province of Media, and he himself in the meantime marcht against the other Provinces of Asia, and subdu’d them all in Seventeen Years time, except the Indians and Bactrians. But no Writer has given any Account of the several Battels he fought, nor of the number of those Nations he conquer’d; and therefore following Ctesias the Cnidian, we shall only briefly run over the most famous and considerable Countries. He over-ran all the Countries bordering upon the Sea, together with the adjoining Continent, as Egypt and Phenicia, Celo-Syria, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia, Caria, Phrygia, Mysia, and Lydia; the Province of Troas and Phrygia upon the Hellespont, together with Propontis, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and the Barbarous Nations adjoyning upon Pontus, as far as to Tanais; he gain’d likewise the Country of the Caddusians, Tarpyrians, Hyrcanians, Dacians, Derbians, Carmanians, Choroneans, Borchanians, and Parthians. He pierc’d likewise into Persia, the Provinces of Susiana, and that call’d Caspiana, through those narrow Straits, which from thence are call’d the Caspian Gates. He subdu’d likewise many other less considerable Nations, which would be too tedious here to recount. After much toyl and labour in vain, because of the difficulty of the Passes, and the multitude of those Warlike Inhabitants, he was forc’d to put off his War against the Bactrians to another opportunity.

Having marcht back with his Army into Syria, he markt out a Place for the building of a stately City: For in as much as he had surpast all his Ancestors in the glory and success of his Arms, he was resolv’d to build one of that state and grandeur as should not only be the greatest then in the World, but such as none that ever should come after him should be able easily to exceed.

The King of Arabia he sent back with his Army into his own Country, with many rich Spoils, and noble Gifts. And he himself having got a great number of his Forces together, and provided Mony and Treasure, and other things necessary for the purpose, built a City near the River Euphrates, very famous for its Walls and Fortifications; of a long Form; for on both sides it ran out in length above an Hundred and Fifty Furlongs; but the Two lesser Angles were only Ninety Furlongs apiece; so that the Circumference of the whole was Four Hundred and Fourscore Furlongs. And the Founder was not herein deceived, for none ever after built the like, either as to the largeness of its Circumference, or the stateliness of its Walls. For the Wall was an Hundred Foot in Height, and so broad as Three Chariots might be driven together upon it in breast: There were Fifteen Hundred Turrets upon the Walls, each of them Two Hundred Foot high. He appointed the City to be inhabited chiefly by the richest Assyrians, and gave liberty to People of any other Nation (to as many as would) to dwell there, and allow’d to the Citizens a large Territory next adjoining to them, and call’d the City after his own Name, Ninus.

When he had finish’d his Work here, he marcht with an Army against the Bactrians, where he marry’d Semiramis; who being so famous above any[582] of her Sex (as in History it is related) we cannot but say something of her here in this Place, being one advanc’d from so low a Fortune, to such a state and degree of Honour and Worldly Glory.

There’s a City in Syria, call’d Ascalon, near which is a deep Lake abounding with Fish, where not far off stands a Temple dedicated to a famous Goddess call’d by the Syrians Derceto [Dagon], she represents a Woman in her Face, and a Fish in all other parts of her Body, upon the account following, as the most Judicious among the Inhabitants report; for they say, that Venus being angry at this Goddess, caus’d her to fall into a vehement pang of Love with a beautiful Young Man, who was among others sacrificing to her, and was got with Child by him, and brought to Bed of a Daughter; and being asham’d afterwards of what she had done, she kill’d the Young Man, and expos’d the Child among Rocks in the Desert, and through Sorrow and Shame cast her self into the Lake, and was afterwards transform’d into a Fish; whence it came to pass, that at this very Day the Syrians eat no Fish, but adore them as Gods. They say that the Infant that was expos’d, was both preserv’d and nourish’d by a most wonderful Providence, by the means of a great Flock of Pigeons that nestled near to the Place where the Child lay; for with their Wings they cherish’t it, and kept it warm; and observing where the Herdsmen and other Shepherds left their Milk in the Neighbouring Cottages, took it up in their Bills, and as so many Nurses thrust their Beaks between the Infants Lips, and so instil’d the Milk: And when the Child was a Year old, and stood in need of stronger Nourishment, the Pigeons fed it with pieces of Cheese which they pickt out from the rest: When the Shepherds return’d, and found their Cheeses pickt round, they wondred (at first) at the thing; but observing afterward how it came to pass, they not only found out the cause, but likewise a very beautiful Child, which they forthwith carry’d away to their Cottages, and made a Present of it to the King’s Superintendent of his Flocks and Herds (whose Name was Simma) who (having no Children of his own) carefully bred up the Young Lady as if she had been his own Daughter, and call’d her Semiramis, a denomination in the Syrian Language deriv’d from Pigeons, which the Syrians ever after ador’d for Goddesses. And these are the Stories told of Semiramis.

Being now grown up, and exceeding all others of her Sex for the Charms of her Beauty, one of the King’s great Officers, call’d Menon, was sent to take an account of the King’s Herds and Flocks: This Man was Lord President of the King’s Council, and chief Governor of Syria, and lodging upon this occasion at Simma’s House, at the sight of Semiramis, fell in love with her, and with much intreaty obtain’d her from Simma, and carried her away with him to Nineve, where he Marry’d her, and had by her two Sons, Hypates and Hydaspes: And being a Woman of admirable Parts as well as Beauty, her Husband was altogether at her Devotion, and never would do any thing without her Advice, which was ever successful.

About this time Ninus having finish’d his City (call’d after his own Name), prepar’d for his Expedition against the Bactrians; and having had experience of the greatness of their Forces, the valour of their Souldiers, and the difficulties of passing into their Country, he rais’d an Army of the choicest Men he could pick out from all Parts of his Dominions; for because he was baffl’d in his former Expedition, he was resolv’d to invade Bactria with a far stronger Army than he did before. Bringing therefore his whole Army together at a General Randezvouz, there were numbred (as Ctesias writes) Seventeen Hundred Thousand Foot, above Two Hundred and Ten Thousand Horse, and no fewer than Ten Thousand and Six Hundred Hooked[583] Chariots. This number at the first view seems to be very incredible; but to such as seriously consider the largeness and populousness of Asia, it cannot be judg’d impossible. For if any (not to say any thing of the Eight Hundred Thousand Men that Darius had with him in his Expedition against the Scythians, and the innumerable Army Xerxes brought over with him into Greece) will but take notice of things done lately, even as of Yesterday, he’l more easily credit what we now say. For in Sicily Dionysius led only out of that one City of Syracuse, an Hundred and Twenty Thousand Foot, and Twelve Thousand Horse; and lancht out of one Port, a Navy of Four Hundred Sail, of which some were of Three Tyre of Oars, and others of Five: And the Romans a little before the Times of Hannibal, rais’d in Italy of their own Citizens and Confederates, an Army little less than a Million of Fighting Men; and yet all Italy is not to be compar’d with one Province of Asia for number of Men. But this may sufficiently convince them that compute the ancient Populousness of the Countries by the present depopulations of the Cities at this day.

Ninus therefore marching with these Forces against the Bactrians, divided his Army into Two Bodies, because of the straitness and difficulty of the Passages. There are in Bactria many large and populous Cities, but one is more especially Famous, call’d Bactria, in which the King’s Palace, for greatness and magnificence, and the Citadel for strength, far excel all the rest.

Oxyartes reign’d there at this time, who caus’d all that were able, to bear Arms, and muster’d an Army of Four Hundred Thousand Men. With these he met the Enemy at the Straights, entering into his Country, where he suffered Ninus to enter with part of his Army: When he saw a competent number enter’d, he fell upon them in the open Plain, and fought them with that resolution, that the Bactrians put the Assyrians to flight, and pursuing them to the next Mountains, kill’d a Hundred Thousand of their Enemies; but after the whole Army enter’d, the Bactrians were overpower’d by number, and were broken, and all fled to their several Cities, in order to defend every one his own Country. Ninus easily subdu’d all the rest of the Forts and Castles; but Bactria itself was so strong and well provided, that he could not force it; which occasion’d a long and tedious Siege, so that the Husband of Semiramis (who was there in the King’s Camp) being Love-sick, impatient of being any longer without his wife, sent for her, who being both discreet and couragious, and endowed with other noble Qualifications, readily imbrac’d the opportunity of shewing to the World her own natural Valour and Resolution; and that she might with more safety perform so long a Journey, she put on such a Garment as whereby she could not be discern’d whether she were a Man or a Woman; and so made, that by it she both preserv’d her Beauty from being scorcht by the heat in her Journey, and likewise was thereby more nimble and ready for any business she pleas’d to undertake, being of her self a youthful and sprightly Lady; and this sort of Garment was in so high esteem, that the Medes afterwards when they came to be Lords of Asia, wore Semiramis’s Gown, and the Persians likewise after them.

As soon as she came to Bactria, and observ’d the manner of the Siege, how Assaults were made only in open and plain Places most likely to be enter’d, and that none dar’d to approach the Cittadel, because of its natural Strength and Fortification, and that they within took more care to defend the lower and weaker parts of the Walls, than the Castle where they neglected their Guards, she took some with her that were skilful in climbing up the Rocks, and with them with much Toyl, pass’d over a deep Trench, and possess’d her self of part of the Castle; whereupon she gave a Signal to them[584] that were assaulting the Wall upon the Plain. Then they that were within the City being suddenly struck with a Panick Fear at the taking of the Castle, in desperation of making any further defence forsook the Walls.

The City being taken in this manner, the King greatly admir’d the Valour of the Woman, and bountifully rewarded her, and was presently so passionately affected at the sight of her Beauty, that he us’d all the Arguments imaginable to persuade her Husband to bestow his Wife upon him, promising him as a Reward of his Kindness, to give him his daughter Sosana in Marriage: But he absolutely refus’d; upon which the King threaten’d him, that if he would not consent, he would pluck out his Eyes.

Menon hereupon out of fear of the King’s Threats, and overpower’d with the Love of his Wife, fell into a distracted Rage and Madness, and forthwith hang’d himself. And this was the occasion of the advancement of Semiramis to the Regal state and dignity.

Ninus having now possess’d himself of all the Treasures of Bactria (where was abundance of Gold and Silver) and settled his Affairs throughout the whole Province of Bactria, returned with his Army to his own Country.

Afterwards he had a Son by Semiramis, call’d Ninyas, and dy’d leaving his Wife Queen Regent. She bury’d her Husband Ninus in the Royal Palace, and rais’d over him a Mount of Earth of a wonderful bigness, being Nine Furlongs in height, and ten in breadth, as Ctesias says: So that the City standing in a Plain near to the River Euphrates, the Mount (many Furlongs off) looks like a stately Cittadel. And it’s said, that it continues to this day, though Nineve was destroy’d by the Medes when they ruin’d the Assyrian Empire.

SEMIRAMIS BUILDS A GREAT CITY

Semiramis was naturally of an high aspiring Spirit, ambitious to excel all her Predecessors in glorious Actions, and therefore imploy’d all her Thoughts about the building of a City in the Province of Babylon; and to this end having provided Architects, Artists, and all other Necessaries for the Work, She got together Two Millions of Men out of all Parts of the Empire to be imploy’d in the building of the City. It was so built as that the River Euphrates ran through the middle of it, and she compass’d it round with a Wall of Three Hundred and Sixty Furlongs in Circuit, and adorn’d with many stately Turrets; and such was the state and grandeur of the Work, that the Walls were of that breadth, as that Six Chariots abreast might be driven together upon them. Their height was such as exceeded all Mens belief that heard of it (as Ctesias Cnidius relates). But Clitarchus, and those who afterwards went over with Alexander into Asia, have written that the Walls were in Circuit Three Hundred Sixty Five Furlongs; the Queen making them of that Compass, to the end that the Furlongs should be as many in number as the Days of the Year: They were of Brick cemented with Brimstone; in height as Ctesias says Fifty Orgyas; but as some of the later Writers report, but Fifty Cubits only, and that the Breadth was but a little more than what would allow two Chariots to be driven afront. There were Two Hundred and Fifty Turrets, in height and thickness proportionable to the largeness of the Wall. It is not to be wondered at, that there were so few Towers upon a Wall of so great a Circuit, being that in many Places round the City, there were deep Morasses; so that it was judg’d to no purpose to raise Turrets there where they were so naturally fortify’d: Between the Wall and the Houses, there was a Space left round the City of Two Hundred Foot.

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That the Work might be the more speedily dispatcht, to each of her Friends was allotted a Furlong, with an allowance of all Expences necessary for their several Parts, and commanded all should be finish’d in a Years time; which being diligently perfected with the Queen’s Approbation, she then made a Bridge over the narrowest part of the River, Five Furlongs in length, laying the Supports and Pillars of the arches with great Art and Skill in the Bottom of the Water Twelve Foot distance from each other. That the Stones might be the more firmly joyn’d, they were bound together with Hooks of Iron, and the Joints fill’d up with melted Lead. And before the Pillars, she made and placed Defences, with sharp pointed Angles, to receive the Water before it beat upon the flat sides of the Pillars, which caus’d the Course of the Water to run round by degrees gently and moderately as far as to the broad sides of the Pillars, so that the sharp Points of the Angles cut the Stream, and gave a check to its violence, and the roundness of them by little and little giving way, abated the force of the Current. This bridge was floor’d with great Joices and Planks of Cedar, Cypress and Palm Trees, and was Thirty Foot in breadth, and for Art and Curiosity, yielded to none of the works of Semiramis. On either side of the River she rais’d a Bank, as broad as the Wall, and with great cost drew it out in length an Hundred Furlongs. She built likewise Two Palaces at each end of the Bridge upon the Bank of the River, whence she might have a Prospect over the whole City, and make her Passage as by Keys to the most convenient Places in it, as she had occasion. And whereas Euphrates runs through the middle of Babylon, making its course to the South, the Palaces lye the one on the East and the other on the West Side of the River; both built at exceeding Costs and Expence. For that on the West had an high and stately Wall, made of well burnt Brick, Sixty Furlongs in compass; within this was drawn another of a round Circumference, upon which were portray’d in the Bricks, before they were burnt, all sorts of living Creatures, as if it were to the Life, laid with great Art in curious Colours. This Wall was in Circuit Forty Furlongs, Three Hundred Bricks thick, and in height (as Ctesias says) a Hundred Yards, upon which were Turrets an Hundred and Forty Yards high.

The Third and most inward Wall immediately surrounded the Palace, Thirty Furlongs in Compass, and far surmounted the middle Wall, both in height and thickness; and on this Wall and the Towers were represented the Shapes of all sorts of Living Creatures, artificially exprest in most lively Colours. Especially was represented a General Hunting of all sorts of wild Beasts, each Four Cubits high and upwards; amongst these was to be seen Semiramis on Horseback, striking a Leopard through with a Dart, and next to her, her Husband Ninus in close Fight with a Lion, piercing him with his Lance. To this Palace she built likewise Three Gates, under which were Apartments of Brass for Entertainments, into which Passages were open’d by a certain Engin.

This Palace far excell’d that on the other side of the River, both in greatness and adornments. For the outmost Wall of that (made of well burnt Brick) was but Thirty Furlongs in compass. Instead of the curious Portraiture of Beasts, there were the Brazen Statues of Ninus and Semiramis, the Great Officers, and of Jupiter, whom the Babylonians call Belus; and likewise Armies drawn up in Battalia, and divers sorts of Hunting were there represented, to the great diversion and pleasure of the Beholders. After all these in a low Ground in Babylon, she sunk a Place for a Pond Four-square, every Square being Three Hundred Furlongs in length, lin’d with Brick, and cemented with Brimstone, and the whole Five and Thirty[586] Foot in depth: Into this having first turn’d the River, she then made a Passage in nature of a Vault, from one Palace to another, whose Arches were built of firm and strong Brick, and plaister’d all over on both sides with Bitumen Four Cubits thick. The Walls of this Vault were Twenty Bricks in thickness, and Twelve Foot High, beside and above the Arches; and the breadth was Fifteen Foot. This Piece of Work being finish’d in Two Hundred and Sixty Days, the River was turn’d into its ancient Channel again, so that the River flowing over the whole Work, Semiramis could go from one Palace to the other, without passing over the River. She made likewise Two Brazen Gates at either end of the Vault, which continu’d to the time of the Persian Empire.

In the middle of the City, she built a Temple to Jupiter, whom the Babylonians call Belus (as we have before said) of which since Writers differ amongst themselves, and the Work is now wholly decay’d through length of Time, there’s nothing that can certainly be related concerning it: Yet it’s apparent it was of an exceeding great height, and that by the advantage of it, the Chaldean Astrologers exactly observ’d the setting and rising of the Stars. The whole was built of Brick, cemented with Brimstone, with great Art and Cost. Upon the top she plac’d Three Statues of beaten Gold of Jupiter, Juno and Rhea. That of Jupiter stood upright in the posture as if he were walking; he was Forty Foot in height, and weigh’d a Thousand Babylonish Talents. The Statue of Rhea was of the same weight sitting on a Golden Throne, having Two Lions standing on either side, one at her Knees, and near to them Two exceeding great Serpents of Silver, weighing Thirty Talents apiece. Here likewise the Image of Juno stood upright, and weighed Eight Hundred Talents, grasping a Serpent by the Head in her right Hand, and holding a Scepter adorn’d with precious Stones in her left.

For all these Deities there was plac’d a Common Table made of beaten Gold, Forty Foot long, and Fifteen broad, weighing Five Hundred Talents: Upon which stood Two Cups weighing Thirty Talents, and near to them as many Censers weighing Three Hundred Talents: There were there likewise plac’d Three Drinking Bowls of Gold, one of which dedicated to Jupiter, weigh’d Twelve Hundred Babylonish Talents, but the other Two Six Hundred apiece; but all those the Persian Kings sacrilegiously carry’d away. And length of Time has either altogether consum’d, or much defac’d the Palaces and the other Structures; so that at this day but a small part of this Babylon is inhabited, and the greatest part which lay within the Walls is turn’d into Tillage and Pasture.

There was likewise a Hanging Garden (as it’s call’d) near the Citadel, not built by Semiramis, but by a later Prince, call’d Cyrus, for the sake of a Curtesan, who being a Persian (as they say) by Birth, and coveting Meadows on Mountain Tops, desir’d the King by an Artificial Plantation to imitate the Land in Persia. This Garden was Four Hundred Foot Square, and the Ascent up to it was as to the Top of a Mountain, and had Buildings and Apartments out of one into another, like unto a Theater. Under the Steps to the Ascent, were built Arches one above another, rising gently by degrees, which supported the whole Plantation. The highest Arch upon which the Platform of the Garden was laid, was Fifty Cubits high, and the Garden itself was surrounded with Battlements and Bulwarks. The Walls were made very strong, built at no small Charge and Expence, being Two and Twenty Foot thick, and every Sally-port Ten Foot wide: Over the several Stories of this Fabrick, were laid Beams and Summers of huge Massy Stones each Sixteen Foot long, and Four broad.

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The Roof over all these was first cover’d with Reeds, daub’d with abundance of Brimstone; then upon them was laid double Tiles pargeted together with a hard and durable Mortar (such as we call Plaister of Paris), and over them after all, was a Covering with Sheets of Lead, that the Wet which drencht through the Earth, might not rot the Foundation. Upon all these was laid Earth of a convenient depth, sufficient for the growth of the greatest Trees. When the Soyl was laid even and smooth, it was planted with all sorts of Trees, which both for Greatness and Beauty, might delight the Spectators. The Arches (which stood one above another, and by that means darted light sufficient one into another) had in them many stately Rooms of all Kinds, and for all purposes. But there was one that had in it certain Engins, whereby it drew plenty of Water out of the River through certain Conduits and Conveyances from the Platform of the Garden, and no body without was the wiser, or knew what was done. This Garden (as we said before) was built in later Ages.

But Semiramis built likewise other Cities upon the Banks of Euphrates and Tigris, where she establish’d Marts for the vending of Merchandize brought from Media and Paretacena, and other Neighbouring Countries. For next to Nile and Ganges, Euphrates and Tigris are the noblest Rivers of all Asia, and have their Spring-heads in the Mountains of Arabia, and are distant one from another Fifteen Hundred Furlongs. They run through Media and Paretacena into Mesopotamia, which from its lying in the middle between these Two Rivers, has gain’d from them that Name; thence passing through the Province of Babylon, they empty themselves into the Red Sea. These being very large Rivers, and passing through divers Countries, greatly inrich the Merchants that traffick in those Parts; so that the Neighbouring Places are full of Wealthy Mart Towns, and greatly advanc’d the glory and majesty of Babylon.

Semiramis likewise caus’d a great Stone to be cut out of the Mountains of Armenia, an Hundred and Twenty Five Foot in length, and Five in breadth and thickness; this she convey’d to the River by the help of many Yokes of Oxen and Asses, and there put it Aboard a Ship, and brought it safe by Water to Babylon, and set it up in the most remarkable High-way as a wonderful Spectacle to all Beholders. From its shape it’s call’d an Obelisk (Obelos in Greek signifies a Spit) and is accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World. There are indeed many remarkable and wonderful things to be seen in Babylon; but amongst these, the great quantity of Brimstone that there flows out of the Ground, is not to be the least admir’d, which is so much, that it not only supply’d all their occasions in building such great and mighty Works, but the common People profusely gather it, and when it’s dry, burn it instead of Fewel; and though it be drawn out by an innumerable Company of People, as from a great Fountain, yet it’s as plentiful as ever it was before. Near this Fountain there’s a Spring not big, but very fierce and violent, for it casts forth a Sulphureous and gross Vapour, which suddenly kills every living Creature that comes near to it; for the Breath being stopt a long time, and all power of Respiration taken away by the force of the Exhalation, the Body presently swells so, that the Parts about the Lungs are all in a Flame.

Beyond the River there is a Morass, about which is a crusty Earth; if any unacquainted with the Place get into it, at first he floats upon the Top, when he comes into the Middle he’s violently hal’d away, and striving to help himself, seems to be held so fast by something or other, that all his Labour to get loose is in vain. And first his Feet, then his Legs and Thighs to his[588] Loyns are benumm’d, at length his whole Body is stupify’d, and then down he sinks to the Bottom, and presently after is cast up dead to the Surface. And thus much for the Wonders of Babylon.

SEMIRAMIS BEGINS A CAREER OF CONQUEST

When Semiramis had finish’d all her Works, she marcht with a great Army into Media, and encamp’d near to a Mountain call’d Bagistan; there she made a Garden twelve Furlongs in Compass: It was in a plain Champain Country, and had a great Fountain in it, which water’d the whole Garden. Mount Bagistan is dedicated to Jupiter, and towards one side of the Garden has steep Rocks seventeen Furlongs from the Top to the Bottom. She cut out a Piece of the lower Part of the Rock, and caus’d her own Image to be carv’d upon it, and a Hundred of her Guard that were Launceteers standing round about her. She wrote likewise in Syriac Letters upon the Rock, That Semiramis ascended from the Plain to the Top of the Mountain by laying the Packs and Fardles of the Beasts that follow’d her one upon another.

Marching away from hence, she came to Chaone, a City of Media, where she incamp’d upon a rising Ground, from whence she took notice of an exceeding great and high Rock, where she made another very great Garden in the very Middle of the Rock, and built upon it stately Houses of Pleasure, whence she might both have a delightful Prospect into the Garden, and view the Army as they lay incamp’d below in the Plain; being much delighted with this Place she stay’d here a considerable Time, giving up her self to all kinds of Pleasures and Delights, for she forbore marrying lest she should then be depos’d from the Government, and in the mean time she made Choice of the handsomest Commanders to be her Gallants; but after they had layn with her she cut off their Heads.

From hence she march’d towards Ecbatana, and arriv’d at the Mountain Zarcheum, which being many Furlongs in Extent, and full of steep Precipices and craggy Rocks, there was no passing but by long and tedious Windings and Turnings. To leave therefore behind her an Eternal Monument of her Name, and to make a short Cut for her Passage, she caus’d the Rocks to be hew’d down, and the Valleys to be fill’d up with Earth, and so in a short time at a vast Expence laid the Way open and plain, which to this day is call’d Semiramis’s Way.

When she came to Ecbatana, which is situated in a low and even Plain, she built there a stately Palace, and bestow’d more of her Care and Pains here than she had done at any other Place. For the City wanting Water (there being no Spring near) she plentifully supply’d it with good and wholesom Water, brought thither with a great deal of Toyl and Expence, after this manner: There’s a Mountain call’d Orontes, twelve Furlongs distant from the City, exceeding high and steep for the Space of five and twenty Furlongs up to the Top; on the other side of this Mount there’s a great Mear which empties it self into the River. At the Foot of this Mountain she dug a Canal fifteen Foot in Breadth and Forty in Depth, through which she convey’d Water in great Abundance into the City. And these are the Things which she did in Media.

Afterwards she made a Progress through Persia and all the rest of her Dominions in Asia, and all along as she went she plain’d all the Way before her, levelling both Rocks and Mountains. On the other hand in Champain Countries she would raise Eminences on which she would sometimes build[589] Sepulchres for her Officers and Commanders, and at other times Towns and Cities. Throughout her whole Expeditions she always us’d to raise an Ascent, upon which she pitcht her own Pavilion, that from thence she might have a View of her whole Army. Many Things which she perform’d in Asia remain to this day, and are call’d Semiramis’s Works.

Afterwards she pass’d through all Egypt, and having conquer’d the greatest Part of Lybia, she went to the Temple of Jupiter Hammon, and there inquir’d of the Oracle how long she should live; which return’d her this Answer, That she should leave this World and afterwards be for ever honour’d by some Nations in Asia, when Ninyas her Son should be plotting against her.

When she had perform’d these things, she marcht into Ethiopia, and having subdu’d many Places in it, she had an Opportunity to see what was there very remarkable and wonderful. For they say there’s a foursquare Lake, a hundred and sixty Foot in Circuit, the Water of which is in Colour like unto Vermilion, and of an extraordinary sweet Flavour, much like unto old Wine; yet of such wonderful Operation, that whosoever drinks of it goes presently mad, and confesses all the faults that ever he had been before guilty of; but some will scarce believe this Relation.

The Ethiopians have a peculiar way of burying their Dead; for after they have embalm’d the Body they pour round about it melted Glass, and then place it upon a Pillar, so that the Corps may be plainly seen through the Glass, as Herodotus has reported the thing. But Ctesias of Cnidus affirms that he tells a Winter-tale, and says that it’s true indeed that the Body is embalm’d, but that Glass is not pour’d upon the naked Body, for the Bodies thereby would be so scorch’d and defac’d that they could not possibly retain any likeness to the dead: And that therefore they make an hollow Statue of Gold, and put the Body within it and then pour the melted Glass round upon this Statue, which they set upon some high Place, and so the Statue which resembles the dead is seen through the Glass, and thus he says they used to bury those of the richer Sort; But those of meaner Fortunes they put into Statues of Silver; and for the poor they make Statues of Potter’s Clay, every one having Glass enough, for there’s Abundance to be got in Ethiopia, and ready at hand for all the Inhabitants. But we shall speak more fully of the Customs and Laws of the Ethiopians and the Product of the Land and other things worthy of Remark presently when we come to relate their Antiquities and old Fables and Stories.

SEMIRAMIS INVADES INDIA

Semiramis having settl’d her affairs in Egypt and Ethiopia, return’d with her Army into Asia to Bactria: And now having a great Army, and enjoying a long Peace, she had a longing Desire to perform some notable Exploit by her Arms. Hearing therefore that the Indians were the greatest Nation in the whole World, and had the largest and richest Tract of Land of all others, she resolv’d to make War upon them. Stabrobates was at that time King, who had innumerable Forces, and many Elephants bravely accoutred and fitted to strike Terror into the Hearts of his Enemies. For India for the Pleasantness of the Country excell’d all others, being water’d in every Place with many Rivers, so that the Land yielded every year a double Crop; and by that Means was so rich and so abounded with Plenty of all things necessary for the Sustenance of Man’s Life, that it supply’d the Inhabitants continually with such things as made them excessively rich, insomuch as it[590] was never known that there was ever any Famine amongst them, the Climate being so happy and favourable; and upon that account likewise there’s an incredible Number of Elephants, which for Courage and Strength of Body far excel those in Africa. Moreover this country abounds in Gold, Silver, Brass, Iron and pretious Stones of all sorts, both for Profit and Pleasure.

All which being nois’d abroad, so stirr’d up the Spirit of Semiramis, that (tho’ she had no Provocation given her), yet she was resolv’d upon the War against the Indians. But knowing that she had need of great Forces, she sent Dispatches to all the Provinces, with Command to the Governors to list the choicest young Men they could find, ordering the Proportion of Souldiers every Province and Country should send forth according to the largeness of it; and commanded that all should furnish themselves with new Arms and Armour, and all appear in three years time at a general Randezvouz in Bactria bravely arm’d and accoutred in all Points. And having sent the Shipwrights out to Phœnicia, Syria, Cyprus, and other Places bordering upon the Sea-costs, she prepar’d Timber for them fit for the Purpose, and order’d them to build Vessels that might be taken asunder and convey’d from place to place wherever she pleas’d. For the River Indus bordering upon that Kingdom being the greatest in those parts, she stood in need of many River-boats to pass it in Order to repress the Indians. But being there was no Timber near that River she was necessitated to convey the Boats thither by Land from Bactria.

She further consider’d that she was much inferior to the Indians for Elephants (which were absolutely necessary for her to make use of) she therefore contriv’d to have Beasts that should resemble them, hoping by this Means to strike a Terror into the Indians, who believ’d there were no Elephants in any place but India.

To this End she provided three hundred thousand black Oxen, and distributed the Flesh amongst a Company of ordinary Mechanicks and such Fellows as she had to play the Coblers for her, and ordered them by stitching the Skins together and stuffing them with Straw to imitate the Shape of an Elephant, and in every one of them she put a Man to govern them, and a Camel to carry them, so that at a distance they appear’d to all that saw them as if they were really such Beasts.

They that were imploy’d in this Work wrought at it night and day in a Place which was wall’d round for the Purpose, and Guards set at every Gate, that none might be admitted either to go in or out, to the end that none might see what they were doing, lest it should be nois’d abroad and come to the Ears of the Indians.

Having therefore provided Shipping and Elephants in the space of two years, in the third she randezvouz’d all her Forces in Bactria. Her Army consisted (as Ctesias says) of three Millions of Foot, two hundred Thousand Horse, and a hundred Thousand Chariots, and a hundred Thousand Men mounted upon Camels with Swords four Cubits long. The Boats that might be taken asunder were two Thousand; which the Camels carry’d by Land as they did the Mock-Elephants, as we have before declar’d. The Souldiers made their Horses familiar with these feign’d Beasts by bringing them often to them, lest they should be terrify’d at the Sight of them; which Perseus imitated many Ages after when he was to fight with the Romans, who had Elephants in their Army out of Africa. However this contrivance prov’d to be of no Advantage either to him or her, as will appear in the Issue herein a little after related.

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When Stabrobates the Indian King heard of these great Armies and the mighty Preparations made against him, he did all he could to excel Semiramis in everything. And first he built of great Canes four Thousand River-boats: For abundance of these Canes grow in India about the Rivers and Fenns, so thick as a Man can scarce fathom: And Vessels made of these Reeds (they say) are exceeding useful, because they’l never rot or be worm-eaten.

He was very diligent likewise in preparing of Arms and going from Place to Place throughout all India, and so rais’d a far greater Army than that of Semiramis. To his former Number of Elephants he added more, which he took by hunting, and furnish’d them all with everything that might make them look terrible in the Face of their Enemies, so that by their Multitude and the Compleatness of their Armour in all Points it seem’d above the Strength and Power of Man to bear up against the violent Shock of these Creatures.

Having therefore made all these Preparations, he sent Embassadours to Semiramis (as she was on her March towards him) to complain and upbraid her for beginning a War without any Provocation or Injury offer’d her; and by his private Letters taxed her with her whorish Course of Life, and vow’d (calling the Gods to witness) that if he conquer’d her he would nail her to the Cross. When she read the Letters, she smil’d, and said, the Indian should presently have a Trial of her Valour by her Actions. When she came up with her Army to the River Indus she found the Enemies Fleet drawn up in a Line of Battle; whereupon she forthwith drew up her own, and having mann’d it with the stoutest Souldiers, joyn’d Battle, yet so ordering the Matter as to have her Land-forces ready upon the Shoar to be assisting as there should be Occasion. After a long and sharp Fight with Marks of Valour on both sides, Semiramis was at length victorious, and sunk a Thousand of the Enemies Vessels, and took a great number of Prisoners. Puffed up with this Success she took in all the Cities and Islands that lay in the River, and carry’d away a hundred Thousand Captives. After this the Indian King drew off his Army (as if he fled for Fear) but in Truth to decoy his Enemies to pass the River.

Semiramis therefore (seeing things fall out according to her wish) laid a broad Bridge of Boats (at a vast Charge) over the River, and thereby passed over all her Forces, leaving only threescore Thousand to guard the Bridge, and with the rest of her Army pursu’d the Indians. She plac’d the Mock-Elephants in the Front that the Enemies Scouts might presently inform the King what Multitudes of Elephants she had in her Army: And she was not deceiv’d in her hopes; for when the Spies gave an Account to the Indians what a great Multitude of these Creatures were advancing towards them, they were all in amaze, inquiring among themselves, whence the Assyrians should be supply’d with such a vast number of Elephants: But the Cheat could not be long conceal’d, for some of Semiramis’s Souldiers being laid by the Heels for their Carelessness upon the Guard (through Fear of further Punishment) made their Escape and fled to the Enemy, and undeceiv’d them as to the Elephants; upon which the Indian King was mightily encourag’d, and caus’d Notice of the Delusion to be spread through the whole Army, and then forthwith march’d with all his Force against the Assyrians, Semiramis on the other hand doing the like.

When they approach’d near one to another, Stabrobates the Indian King plac’d his Horse and Chariots in the Van-guard at a good distance before the main Body of his Army. The Queen having plac’d her Mock-Elephants at[592] the like distance from her main Body, valiantly receiv’d her Enemies Charge; but the Indian Horse were most strangely terrify’d; for in Regard the Phantasms at a distance seem’d to be real Elephants, the Horses of the Indians (being inur’d to those Creatures) prest boldly and undauntedly forward; but when they came near and saw another sort of Beast than usual, and the smell and every thing else almost being strange and new to them, they broke in with great Terror and Confusion, one upon another, so that they cast some of their Riders headlong to the Ground, and ran away with others (as the Lot happen’d) into the midst of their Enemies.

Whereupon Semiramis readily making use of her Advantage, with a Body of choice Men fell in upon them, and routed them, forcing them back to their main Body: And though Stabrobates was something astonish’d at this unexpected Defeat, yet he brought up his Foot against the Enemy with his Elephants in the Front: He himself was in the right Wing, mounted upon a stately Elephant, and made a fierce Charge upon the Queen her self, who happen’d then to be opposite to him in the left.

And tho’ the Mock-Elephants in Semiramis’s Army did the like, yet they stood the violent shock of the other but a little while, for the Indian Beasts being both exceeding strong and stout, easily bore down and destroy’d all that oppos’d them, so that there was a great Slaughter; for some they trampl’d under foot, others they rent in pieces with their Teeth, and toss’d up others with their Trunks into the Air. The Ground therefore being cover’d with Heaps of dead Carcases and nothing but Death and Destruction to be seen on every hand, so that all were full of Horror and Amazement, none durst keep their Order or Ranks any longer.

Upon which the whole Assyrian Army fled outright, and the Indian King encountered with Semiramis, and first wounded her with an Arrow in the Arm, and afterwards with a Dart (in wheeling about) in the Shoulder, whereupon the Queen (her Wounds not being mortal) fled, and by the Swiftness of her Horse (which far exceeded the other that pursu’d her) she got off. But all making one way to the Bridge of Boats, and such a vast Multitude of Men thronging together in one strait and narrow Passage, the Queen’s Souldiers miserably perish’d by treading down one another under foot, and (which was strange and unusual) Horse and Foot lay tumbling promiscuously one over another.

When they came at length to the Bridge, and the Indians at their Heels, the consternation was so great that many on both sides the Bridge were tumbled over into the River. But when the greatest part of those that remain’d had got over, Semiramis caus’d the Cords and Tenons of the Bridge to be cut, which done, the Boats (which were before joyn’d together, and upon which was a great Number of Indians not in the Pursuit) being now divided into many Parts, and carry’d here and there by the force of the Current, Multitudes of the Indians were drown’d, and Semiramis was now safe and secure, having such a Barrier as the River betwixt her and her Enemies. Whereupon the Indian King being forewarn’d by Prodigies from Heaven and the Opinions of the Soothsayers, forbore all further pursuit. And Semiramis making Exchange of Prisoners in Bactria return’d with scarce a third part of her Army.

A little time after, Semiramis being assaulted by an Eunuch through the treacherous Contrivance of her Son, remembred the former Answer given her by the Oracle at the Temple of Hammon, and therefore pass’d the Business over without punishing of him who was chiefly concern’d in the Plot: But surrendring the Crown to him, commanded all to obey him as their[593] lawful King, and forthwith disappear’d as if she had been translated to the Gods, according to the Words of the Oracle. There are some which fabulously say she was metamorphos’d into a Pigeon; and that she flew away with a Flock of those Birds that lighted upon her Palace: And hence it is that the Assyrians adore a Dove, believing that Semiramis was enthron’d amongst the Gods. And this was the End of Semiramis Queen of all Asia, except India, after she had liv’d Sixty two years, and reign’d Forty two. And these are the Things which Ctesias the Cnidian reports of her in his History.

ANOTHER VIEW OF SEMIRAMIS

Athenæus, and some other Writers, affirm that she was a most beautiful Strumpet, and upon that account the King of Assyria fell in Love with her, and at first was taken into his Favour, and at length becoming his lawful Wife she prevail’d with her Husband to grant her the sole and absolute Authority of the regal Government for the space of five days. Taking therefore upon her the Scepter and royal Mantle of the Kingdom, the first day she made a sumptuous Banquet and magnificent Entertainments, to which she invited the Generals of the Army and all the Nobility, in order to be observant to all her Commands.

The next day having both great and small at her beck, she committed her Husband to the Gaol: And in Regard she was of a bold and daring Spirit, apt and ready to undertake any great Matters, she easily gain’d the Kingdom, which she held to the time of her old Age, and became famous for her many great and wonderful Acts: And these are the Things which Historians variously relate concerning her.c

The second account of Semiramis which Diodorus summarises in the concluding paragraph above from “Athenæus and some other writers” would appear to have been widely accepted in classical times. The same story is told by Ælianus, and is worth quoting, if for nothing else, for the quaintness of diction of Fleming’s sixteenth century translation.

“Of Semiramis some say this, and some set downe that, and amonge all other thinges this (as deserving a monument of sempeternall memorye) is recorded that shee was the moste bewtifull, the most amiable Lady and Queene throughout the universall worlde, albeit shee dyd litle regarde her fine proporcion, her excellent comlynesse, her angelicall grace: and had no respect to the trymming and decking of her body with gorgeous garments, and robes of royalty. It fortuned that this Semiramis, by reason of the rumor and fame of her surpassing beauty, was sent for into Assiria, that the king of that region might satisfie himselfe with the sight of her peerelesse majestie, before whose presence she came according to the tennor of the message.

“The King of Assiria, had no sooner cast his wanton eye upon her, but was forthwith inflamed with the fire of affection towardes her. After certaine circumstances over passed, she required of the King a rich rewarde, namely, a robe of estate, the government of Asia for five dayes continuaunce, and the absolute authorytie in all thinges that were done in the kingdome. Which peticion of the Queene was granted unto by the King, no deniall made to the contrary. In conclusion when she was set and established in the throne of majesty, and had gotten all things (without exception) in the gripes of her aspiryng minde she commanded the King to be slayne, whereby he was dispossessed of his dominion, and she presently thereupon enjoyed the scepter and crowne imperiall over Assiria universall.”d

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REIGN OF NINYAS TO SARDANAPALUS

To complete our view of the classical traditions regarding Assyria, we must hear what Diodorus has to tell us of the successors of Semiramis. Comparison of his account with the lists of Assyrian monarchs, as now known to us, will show how greatly the perspective of Assyrian history was foreshortened as viewed by the classical eye, and how vague appeared the outline of the historical picture. Not even the names of the greatest of oriental monarchs were remembered, though the reminiscences of their deeds had not quite been forgotten. We shall see in subsequent chapters how the names and the accurate records of the deeds were restored to history. It may be added, however, that no authentic account of the destruction of Nineveh has been as yet recovered. For aught that is known to the contrary, the picturesque story of Sardanapalus, as narrated by Diodorus, may be true in its essentials, though it is improbable that the name of the last ruler of Nineveh is correctly given. Still, the rather theatrical character of the Greek conception of oriental customs is not to be forgotten.

It should be added that modern historians are not quite agreed as to the exact period of Assyrian history to which the Sardanapalus stories were applied. Lenormant was disposed to believe that the Greek tradition was based upon reminiscences of a relatively early destruction of Nineveh. It is known that the Assyrian Empire suffered a partial eclipse after its first period of greatness, and it is possible that some unknown king of about the tenth century B.C. was the original of the Sardanapalus fable. Most recent historians, however, are disposed to think that the Greek story really applies to the final destruction of Nineveh, and that Asshurbanapal was the historical monarch whose vaguely remembered deeds gave foundation to the chief features of the story. The fact that Asshurbanapal was so great a connoisseur of literature and art, lends a certain colour to this supposition. It is of course understood that Asshurbanapal was not the last ruler of Nineveh, and that the Greek myth, if based upon his life, erred in associating him with the final catastrophe.a Here is the story as Diodorus tells it:

Ninyas the Son of Ninus and Semiramis, succeeded, and reign’d peaceably, nothing at all like his Mother for Valour and martial Affairs. For he spent all his Time shut up in his Palace, insomuch as he was never seen of any but of his Concubines and Eunuchs; for being given up wholly to his Pleasures, he shook off all Cares and everything that might be irksome and troublesome, placing all the Happiness of a King in a Sordid Indulgence of all sorts of Voluptuousness. But that he might reign the more securely, and be fear’d of all his Subjects, every year he rais’d out of every Province a certain number of Souldiers, under their several Generals, and having brought them in the City, over every Country appointed such a Governor as he could most confide in, and were most at his Devotion. At the end of the year he rais’d as many more out of the Provinces, and sent the former home, taking first of them an Oath of Fidelity. And this he did, that his Subjects observing how he always had a great Army ready in the Field, those of them who were inclin’d to be refractory or rebel (out of fear of Punishment) might continue firm in their due Obedience. And the further Ground likewise of this Yearly Change was, that the Officers and Souldiers might from time to time be disbanded before they could have time[595] to be well acquainted one with another. For length of Time in martial Imployments so improves the Skill and advances the Courage and Resolution of the Commanders, that many times they conspire against their Princes, and wholly fall off from their Allegiance.

His living thus close and unseen, was a covert to the Voluptuous Course of his Life, and in the meantime (as if he had been a God) none durst in the least mutter anything against him. And in this manner (creating Commanders of his Army, constituting of Governors in Provinces, appointing the Chamberlains and Officers of his Houshold, placing of Judges in their several Countries, and the ordering and disposing of all other Matters as he thought fit most for his own Advantage) he spent his Days in Nineve.

After the same manner almost liv’d all the rest of the Kings for the space of Thirty Generations, in a continu’d Line of Succession from Father to Son, to the very Reign of Sardanapalus; in whose time the Empire of the Assyrians devolv’d upon the Medes, after it had continu’d above Thirteen Hundred and Sixty Years, as Ctesias the Cnidian says in his Second Book. But it’s needless to recite their Names, or how long each of them reign’d, in regard none of them did any thing worth remembring, save only that it may deserve an Account how the Assyrians assisted the Trojans, by sending them some Forces under the Command of Memnon the Son of Tithon.

For when Teutamus reign’d in Asia, who was the Twentieth from Ninyas the Son of Semiramis, it’s said the Grecians under their General Agamemnon, made War upon the Trojans, at which time the Assyrians had been Lords of Asia above a Thousand Years. For Priam the King of Troy (being a Prince under the Assyrian Empire, when War was made upon him) sent Ambassadors to crave aid of Teutamus, who sent him Ten Thousand Ethiopians, and as many out of the Province of Susiana, with Two Hundred Chariots under the Conduct of Memnon the Son of Tithon. For this Tithon at that time was Governor of Persia, and in special Favour with the King above all the rest of the Princes: And Memnon was in the Flower of his Age, strong and couragious, and had built a Pallace in the Cittadel of Susa, which retain’d the Name of Memnonia to the time of the Persian Empire. He pav’d also there a Common High-way, which is call’d Memnon’s Way to this day. But the Ethiopians of Egypt question this, and say that Memnon was their Countryman, and shew several antient Palaces which (they say) retain his Name at this day, being call’d Memnon’s Palaces.

Notwithstanding, however it be as to this matter, yet it has been generally and constantly held for a certain Truth, that Memnon led to Troy Twenty Thousand Foot, and Two Hundred Chariots, and signaliz’d his Valour with great Honour and Reputation, with the Death and Destruction of many of the Greeks, till at length he was slain by an Ambuscade laid for him by the Thessalians. But the Ethiopians recover’d his Body, and burnt it, and brought back his Bones to Tithon. And these things the Barbarians say are recorded of Memnon in the Histories of their Kings.

Sardanapalus, the Thirtieth from Ninus, and the last King of the Assyrians, exceeded all his Predecessors in Sloth and Luxury; for besides that, he was seen of none out of his Family, he led a most effeminate Life: For wallowing in pleasure and wanton Dalliances, he cloathed himself in Womens Attire, and spun fine Wool and Purple amongst the throngs of his Concubines. He painted likewise his Face, and deckt his whole Body with other Allurements and proceeded to such a degree of Voluptuousness and sordid Uncleanness, that he compos’d Verses for his Epitaph, with a Command to his Successors to have them inscrib’d upon his Tomb after his[596] Death, which were thus Translated by a Grecian out of the Barbarian Language (An Epitaph fitter for an Ox than a Man, says Aristotle),

Being thus corrupt in his Morals, he not only came to a miserable end himself, but utterly overturn’d the Assyrian Monarchy, which had continu’d longer than any we read of.

For Arbaces a Mede, a Valiant and Prudent Man, and General of the Forces which were sent every Year out of Media to Nineve, was stir’d up by the Governor of Babylon (his Fellow Soldier, and with whom he had contracted an intimate familiarity) to overthrow the Assyrian Empire. This Captain’s Name was Belesis, a most Famous Babylonian Priest, one of those call’d Caldeans, expert in Astrology and Divinations; of great Reputation upon the account of foretelling future Events, which happen’d accordingly. Amongst others, he told his Friend, the Median General, that he should depose Sardanapalus, and be Lord of all his Dominions. Arbaces hereupon hearkning to what he said, promis’d him, that if he succeeded in his Attempt, Belesis should be chief Governor of the Province of Babylon: Being therefore fully persuaded of the truth of what was foretold, as if he had receiv’d it from an Oracle, he enter’d into an Association with the Governors of the rest of the Provinces, and by feasting and caressing of them, gain’d all their Hearts and Affections. He made it likewise his great business to get a sight of the King, that he might observe the Course and manner of his Life; to this end he bestow’d a Cup of Gold upon an Eunuch, by whom being introduc’d into the King’s Presence, he perfectly came to understand his Lasciviousness, and Effeminate course of Life. Upon sight of him, he contemn’d and despis’d him as a Vile and Worthless Wretch, and thereupon was much more earnest to accomplish what the Chaldean had before declar’d to him. At length he conspir’d with Belesis so far, as that he himself persuaded the Medes and Persians to a defection, and the other brought the Babylonians into the Confederacy. He imparted likewise his Design to the King of Arabia, who was at this time his special Friend.

And now the Years attendance of the Army being at an end, new Troops succeeded, and came into their Place, and the former were sent every one here and there, into their several Countries. Hereupon Arbaces prevail’d with the Medes to invade the Assyrian Empire, and drew in the Persians in hopes of Liberty, to join in the Confederacy. Belesis in like manner persuaded the Babylonians to stand up for their Liberties. He sent Messengers also into Arabia, and gain’d that Prince (who was both his Friend, and had been his Guest) for a Confederate.

When therefore the Yearly Course was run out, all these with a great number of forces flockt together to Nineve, in shew to serve their Turn according to custom, but in truth to overturn the Assyrian Empire. The whole number of Soldiers now got together out of those Four Provinces, amounted to Four Hundred Thousand Men. All these (being now in one Camp) call’d a Council of War in order to consult what was to be done.

Sardanapalus being inform’d of the Revolt, led forth the Forces of the rest of the Provinces against them; whereupon a Battel being fought, the Rebels were totally routed, and with a great Slaughter were forc’d to the Mountains Seventy Furlongs from Nineve.

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Being drawn up a Second time in Battalia to try their Fortune in the Field, and now fac’d by the Enemy, Sardanapalus caus’d a Proclamation to be made by the Heralds, that whosoever kill’d Arbaces the Mede, should receive as a Reward, Two Hundred Talents of Gold, and double the Sum to him (together with the Government of Media,) who should take him alive. The like Sum he promis’d to such as should kill Belesis, or take him alive. But not being wrought upon by these Promises, he fought them again, and destroy’d many of the Rebels, and forc’d the rest to fly to their Camp upon the Hills.

Arbaces being disheartn’d with these Misfortunes, call’d a Council of War to consider what was fit further to be done: The greater part were for returning into their own Countries, and possess themselves of the strongest Places, in order to fit and furnish themselves with all things further necessary for the War. But when Belesis the Babylonian assur’d them that the Gods promis’d, that after many Toyls and Labours they should have good success, and all should end well, and had us’d several other Arguments (such as he thought best) he prevail’d with them to resolve to run through all the hazards of the War.

Another Battle therefore was fought, wherein the King gain’d a third Victory, and pursu’d the Revolters as far as to the Mountains of Babylon. In this Fight Arbaces himself was wounded, though he fought stoutly, and slew many of the Assyrians with his own Hand.

After so many Defeats and Misfortunes one upon the neck of another, the Conspirators altogether despair’d of Victory, and therefore the Commanders resolv’d every one to return to their own Country. But Belesis, who lay all that Night Star-gazing in the open Field, prognosticated to them the next day, that if they would but continue together Five Days, unexpected Help would come, and they would see a mighty change, and that Affairs would have a contrary aspect to what they then had; for he affirm’d, that through his Knowledge in Astrology, he understood that the Gods portended so much by the Stars; therefore he intreated them to stay so many days, and make trial of his Art, and wait so long to have an Experiment of the Goodness of the Gods.

All being thus brought back, and waiting till the time appointed, News on a sudden was brought that mighty Forces were at hand, sent to the King out of Bactria. Hereupon Arbaces resolv’d with the stoutest and swiftest Soldiers of the Army, forthwith to make out against the Captains that were advancing, and either by fair words to perswade them to a defection, or by Blows to force them to join with them in their Design. But Liberty being sweet to every one of them, first the Captains and Commanders were easily wrought upon, and presently after the whole Army join’d, and made up one intire Camp together. It happen’d at that time, that the King of Assiria not knowing any thing of the Revolt of the Bactrians, and puft up by his former Successes, was indulging his Sloath and Idleness, and preparing Beasts for Sacrifice, plenty of Wine, and other things necessary in order to feast and entertain his Soldiers.

While his whole Army was now feasting and revelling, Arbaces (receiving intelligence by some Deserters of the Security and Intemperance of the Enemy) fell in upon them on the sudden in the Night; and being in due order and discipline, and setting upon such as were in confusion, he being before prepar’d, and the other altogether unprovided, they easily broke into their Camp, and made a great Slaughter of some, forcing the rest into the City.

[598]

THE DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH

Hereupon Sardanapalus committed the charge of the whole Army to Salemenus his Wife’s Brother, and took upon himself the defence of the City. But the Rebels twice defeated the King’s Forces, once in the open Field, and the Second time before the Walls of the City; in which last ingagement Salemenus was kill’d, and almost all his Army lost, some being cut off in the pursuit, and the rest (save a very few) being intercepted, and prevented from entring into the City, were driven headlong into the River Euphrates; and the number of the Slain was so great, that the River was dy’d over with Blood, and retain’d that Colour for a great distance, and a long course together.

The King being afterwards besieg’d, many of the Nations (through desire of Liberty) revolted to the Confederates; so that Sardanapalus now perceiving that the Kingdom was like to be lost, sent away his Three Sons and Two Daughters, with a great deal of Treasure into Paphlagonia, to Cotta, the Governor there, his most intire friend; and sent posts into all the Provinces of the Kingdom, in order to raise Souldiers, and make all other Preparations necessary to indure a siege. And he was the more incouraged to this, for that he was acquainted with an ancient Prophesy, That Nineve could never be taken by force, till the River became the City’s Enemy; which the more incourag’d him to hold out, because he conceiv’d that was never like to be; therefore he resolv’d to indure the Siege till the Aids which he expected out of the Provinces came up to him.

The Enemy on the other hand grown more couragious by their Successes, eagerly urg’d on the Siege, but made little impression on the Besieg’d by reason of the strength of the Walls; for Ballistes to cast Stones, Testudos to cast up Mounts, and Battering Rams were not known in those Ages. And besides (to say truth) the King had been very careful (as to what concern’d the defence of the place) plentifully to furnish the Inhabitants with every thing necessary. The Siege continu’d Two Years, during which time nothing was done to any purpose, save that the Walls were sometimes assaulted, and the Besieg’d pen’d up in the City. The Third Year it happened that Euphrates overflowing with continual Rains, came up into a part of the City, and tore down the Wall Twenty Furlongs in length.

The King hereupon conceiving that the Oracle was accomplish’d, in that the River was an apparent Enemy to the City, utterly despair’d, and therefore that he might not fall into the Hands of his Enemies, he caus’d a huge Pile of Wood to be made in his Palace Court, and heapt together upon it all his Gold, Silver, and Royal Apparel, and enclosing his Eunuchs and Concubines in an Apartment within the Pile, caus’d it to be set on Fire, and burnt himself and them together, which when the Revolters came to understand, they enter’d through the Breach of the Walls, and took the City; and cloath’d Arbaces with a Royal Robe, and committed to him the sole Authority, proclaiming him King.

When he had rewarded his followers, every one according to their demerit, and appointed Governors over the several Provinces, Belesis the Babylonian, who had foretold his advancement to the Throne, put him in mind of his Services, and demanded the Government of Babylon, which he had before promis’d him. He told him likewise of a Vow that he himself had made to Belus, in the heat of the War, that when Sardanapalus was conquer’d, and the Palace consum’d, he would carry the Ashes to Babylon, and there raise a Mount near to his Temple, which should be an eternal Monument to all[599] that sailed through Euphrates, in memory of him that overturn’d the Assyrian Empire.

But that which in truth induc’d him to make this Request was, that he had been inform’d of the Gold and Silver by an Eunuch (that was a Deserter) whom he had hid and conceal’d: Arbaces therefore being ignorant of the Contrivance (because all the rest beside this Eunuch, were consum’d with the King) granted to him liberty both to carry away the Ashes, and likewise the absolute Government of Babylon without paying any Tribute. Whereupon Belesis forthwith prepar’d Shipping, and together with the Ashes carry’d away most of the Gold and Silver to Babylon. But when the King came plainly to understand the Cheat, he committed the Examination and Decision of this Theft to the other Captains who were his Assistants in the deposing of Sardanapalus. Belesis upon his Trial confess’d the Fact, and thereupon they condemn’d him to lose his Head.

But the King being a Man of a noble and generous Spirit, and willing to adorn the beginning of his Reign with the Marks of his Grace and Mercy, not only pardon’d him, but freely gave him all the Gold and Silver which had been carry’d away; neither did he deprive him of the Government of Babylon, which at the first he conferr’d upon him, saying, That his former good Services did overballance the Injuries afterwards. This gracious Disposition of the King being nois’d abroad, he thereby not only gain’d the Hearts of his People, but was highly honour’d, and his Name famous among all the Provinces, and all judg’d him worthy of the Kingdom, who was so compassionate and gracious to offenders.

The like Clemency he shew’d to the Inhabitants of Nineve; for though he dispers’d them into several Country Villages, yet he restor’d to every one of them their Estates, but raz’d the City to the ground.

The rest of the Silver and Gold that could be found in the Pile (of which there were many Talents) he convey’d to Echatana the Seat Royal of Media.

And thus was the Assyrian Empire overturn’d by the Medes after it had continu’d Thirty Generations: from Ninus above Fourteen Hundred Years.c

FOOTNOTES

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[600]

APPENDIX B. EXCAVATIONS IN MESOPOTAMIA, AND THEIR RESULTS

A wish expressed by Herder early in the nineteenth century, that explorations might be made in the region of the buried cities of Babylonia and Assyria, was destined to meet with early realisation. The exact sites of various of these cities, long utterly forgotten, were discovered; excavations were made, and a harvest of buried records brought to light, surpassing in interest and importance the wildest dreams of anticipation. Not merely the ruins of city walls and of fallen palaces were exhumed, but with them wonderfully preserved sculptures and ornaments of surprising artistic excellence; and, more important still, voluminous written records, historical and literary, imprinted on slabs and cylinders of brick—the books of the period—in strange wedge-shaped characters of unknown import, which modern scholarship soon sufficed to decipher. How these marvellous feats were accomplished had best be explained before we turn to the historical records which they brought to light. It is a thrilling record, which has no exact counterpart elsewhere in history.a The story of how the work was begun is told by that pioneer in the field of Assyriology, Sir A. H. Layard:

THE RUINS OF NINEVEH AND M. BOTTA’S FIRST DISCOVERY

Were the traveller to cross the Euphrates to seek for such ruins in Mesopotamia and Chaldea as he had left behind him in Asia Minor or Syria, his search would be vain. The graceful column rising above the thick foliage of the myrtle, ilex, and oleander; the gradines of the amphitheatre covering a gentle slope, and overlooking the dark blue waters of a lake-like bay; the richly carved cornice or capital half hidden by the luxuriant herbage, are replaced by the stern, shapeless mound rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the fragments of pottery, and the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by the winter rains. He has left the land where nature is still lovely, where, in his mind’s eye, he can rebuild the temple or the theatre, half doubting whether they would have made a more grateful impression upon the senses than the ruin before him. He is now[601] at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps upon which he is gazing. Those of whose works they are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, have left no visible traces of their civilisation, or of their arts: their influence has long since passed away. The more he conjectures, the more vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets desolation: a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder; for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by. These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more earnest reflection, than the temples of Baalbec and the theatres of Ionia.

In the middle of April I left Mosul for Baghdad. As I descended the Tigris on a raft, I again saw the ruins of Nimrud, and had a better opportunity of examining them. It was evening as we approached the spot. The spring rains had clothed the mound with the richest verdure, and the fertile meadows, which stretched around it, were covered with flowers of every hue. Amidst this luxuriant vegetation were partly concealed a few fragments of bricks, pottery, and alabaster, upon which might be traced the well-defined wedges of the cuneiform character. Did not these remains mark the nature of the ruin, it might have been confounded with a natural eminence. A long line of consecutive narrow mounds, still retaining the appearance of walls or ramparts, stretched from its base, and formed a vast quadrangle. The river flowed at some distance from them: its waters, swollen by the melting of the snows on the Armenian hills, were broken into a thousand foaming whirlpools by an artificial barrier, built across the stream. On the eastern bank the soil had been washed away by the current; but a solid mass of masonry still withstood its impetuosity. The Arab, who guided my small raft, gave himself up to religious ejaculations as we approached this formidable cataract, over which we were carried with some violence. Once safely through the danger, he explained to me that this unusual change in the quiet face of the river was caused by a great dam which had been built by Nimrod, and that in the autumn, before the winter rains, the huge stones of which it was constructed, squared, and united by cramps of iron, were frequently visible above the surface of the stream.[39] It was, in fact, one of those monuments of a great people, to be found in all the rivers of Mesopotamia, which were undertaken to ensure a constant supply of water to the innumerable canals, spreading like network over the surrounding country, and which, even in the days of Alexander, were looked upon as the works of an ancient nation. No wonder that the traditions of the present inhabitants of the land should assign them to one of the founders of the human race! The Arab explained the connection between the dam and the city built by Athur, the lieutenant of Nimrod, the vast ruins of which were then before us, and of its purpose as a causeway for the mighty hunter to cross to the opposite palace, now represented by the mound of Hammum Ali. He was telling me of the histories and fate of the kings of a primitive race, still the favourite theme of the inhabitants of the plains of Shinar, when the last glow of twilight faded away, and I fell asleep as we glided onward to Baghdad.

My curiosity had been greatly excited, and from that time I formed the design of thoroughly examining, whenever it might be in my power, these singular ruins.

[602]

It was not until the summer of 1842 that I again passed through Mosul on my way to Constantinople. I was then anxious to reach the Turkish capital, and, travelling Tatar, had no time to explore ruins. I had not, however, forgotten Nimrud. I had frequently spoken to others on the subject of excavations in this and another mound, to which a peculiar interest also attached; and at one time had reason to hope that some persons in England might have been induced to aid in the undertaking. I had even proposed an examination of the ruins to M. Coste, an architect who had been sent by the French government, with its embassy to Persia, to draw and describe the monuments of that country.

On my arrival at Mosul, I found that M. Botta had, since my first visit, been named French consul there; and had already commenced excavations on the opposite side of the river, in the large mound called Kuyunjik. These excavations were on a very small scale, and, at the time of my passage, only fragments of brick and alabaster, upon which were engraved a few letters in the cuneiform character, had been discovered.

Whilst detained by unexpected circumstances at Constantinople, I entered into correspondence with a gentleman in England on the subject of excavations; but, with this exception, no one seemed inclined to assist or take any interest in such an undertaking. I also wrote to M. Botta, encouraging him to proceed, notwithstanding the apparent paucity of results, and particularly calling his attention to the mound of Nimrud, which, however, he declined to explore on account of its distance from Mosul and its inconvenient position. I was soon called away from the Turkish capital to the provinces; and for some months numerous occupations prevented me turning my attention to the ruins and antiquities of Assyria.

In the meanwhile M. Botta, not discouraged by the want of success which had attended his first essay, continued his excavations in the mound of Kuyunjik: and to him is due the honour of having found the first Assyrian monument. This remarkable discovery owed its origin to the following circumstances. The small party employed by M. Botta were at work on Kuyunjik, when a peasant from a distant village chanced to visit the spot. Seeing that every fragment of brick and alabaster uncovered by the workmen was carefully preserved, he asked the reason of this, to him, strange proceeding. On being informed that they were in search of sculptured stones, he advised them to try the mound on which his village was built, and in which, he declared, many such things as they wanted had been exposed on digging for the foundations of new houses. M. Botta, having been frequently deceived by similar[603] stories, was not at first inclined to follow the peasant’s advice, but subsequently sent an agent and one or two workmen to the place.

After a little opposition from the inhabitants, they were permitted to sink a well in the mound; and at a small distance from the surface they came to the top of a wall which, on digging deeper, they found to be built of sculptured slabs of gypsum. M. Botta, on receiving information of this discovery, went at once to the village, which was called Khorsabad. He directed a wider trench to be formed, and to be carried in the direction of the wall. He soon found that he had opened a chamber, which was connected with others, and constructed of slabs of gypsum covered with sculptured representations of battles, sieges, and similar events. His wonder may be easily imagined.

A new history had been suddenly opened to him—the records of an unknown people were before him. He was equally at a loss to account for the age and the nature of the monument. The art shown in the sculptures, the dresses of the figures, the mythic forms on the walls, were all new to him, and afforded no clew to the epoch of the erection of the edifice, and to the people who were its founders. Numerous inscriptions, accompanying the bas-reliefs, evidently contained the explanation of the events thus recorded in sculpture. They were in the cuneiform, or arrow-headed, character. The nature of these inscriptions was at least evidence that the building belonged to a period preceding the conquest of Alexander; for it was generally admitted that after the subjugation of the west of Asia by the Macedonians, the cuneiform writing ceased to be employed. But too little was then known of this character to enable M. Botta to draw any inference from the peculiar arrangement of the wedges, which distinguishes the varieties used in different countries. However, it was evident that the monument appertained to a very ancient and very civilised people; and it was natural from its position to refer it to the inhabitants of Nineveh—a city, which, although it could not have occupied a site so distant from the Tigris, must have been in the vicinity of the place. M. Botta had discovered an Assyrian edifice, the first, probably, which had been exposed to the view of man since the fall of the Assyrian Empire.

M. Botta was not long in perceiving that the building which had been thus partly excavated, unfortunately owed its destruction to fire; and that the gypsum slabs, reduced to lime, were rapidly falling to pieces on exposure to the air. No precaution could arrest this rapid decay; and it was to be feared that this wonderful monument had only been uncovered to complete its ruin. The records of victories and triumphs, which had long attested the power and swelled the pride of the Assyrian kings, and had resisted the ravages of ages, were now passing away forever. They could scarcely be held together until an inexperienced pencil could secure an imperfect evidence of their former existence.

Almost all that was first discovered thus speedily disappeared; and the same fate has befallen nearly everything subsequently found at Khorsabad. A regret is almost felt that so precious a memorial of a great nation should have been thus exposed to destruction, when no precaution could keep entire or secure the greater part of it; but as far as the object of the monument is concerned, the intention of its founders will be amply fulfilled, and the records of their might will be more widely spread, and more effectually preserved, by modern art, than the most exalted ambition could have contemplated.

M. Botta lost no time in communicating his remarkable discovery to the principal scientific body in France. Knowing the interest I felt in his[604] labours, he allowed me to see his letters and drawings as they passed through Constantinople; and I was amongst the first who were made acquainted with his success. And here I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of mentioning, with the acknowledgment and praise which they deserve, his disinterestedness and liberality, so honourable to one engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. During the entire period of his excavations, M. Botta regularly sent me not only his descriptions, but copies of the inscriptions, without exacting any promise as to the use I might make of them. That there are few who would have acted thus liberally, those who have been engaged in a search after antiquities in the East will not be inclined to deny.

M. Botta’s communications were laid before the “Académie,” by M. Mohl; and that body, perceiving at once the importance of the discovery, lost no time in applying to the Minister of Public Instruction for means to carry on the researches. The recommendation was attended to with that readiness and munificence which almost invariably distinguished the French government in undertakings of this nature. Ample funds to meet the cost of extensive excavations were at once assigned to M. Botta, and an artist of acknowledged skill was placed under his orders to draw such parts of the monument discovered as could not be preserved or removed.

With the exception of a few interruptions on the part of the local authorities, who were suspicious of the objects of the excavations, the work was carried on with activity and success, and by the beginning of 1845 the monument had been completely uncovered. The researches of M. Botta were not extended beyond Khorsabad; and having secured many fine specimens of Assyrian sculpture for his country, he returned to Europe with a rich collection of inscriptions, the most important result of his discovery.b

LAYARD’S DISCOVERIES AT NINEVEH

It is indeed a matter for regret there is not the space to continue Layard’s own account of his discoveries. Professor Hommel has summarised this, however, in an exceedingly satisfactory manner, and his account is here given.

Brilliant as Botta’s achievements had been, they were quite cast into the shade by what the English statesman, Sir (then Mr.) A. H. Layard, the sole discoverer of Nineveh, had accomplished for all branches of investigation and knowledge of Assyrian antiquity, by means of the excavations, principally in Kuyunjik and Nimrud, but also in Neby Yunus, Kalah Shergat, and other mounds of ruins in the neighbourhood of Nineveh; these excavations were made with the assistance of Hormuzd Rassam, who subsequently[605] continued them. We remember how, from as far back as the year 1840, it was Layard’s ardent desire to be able to undertake some excavations. He had hailed Botta’s lucky find without envy, and was indeed the first who, in some letters in the Malta Times which afterwards went the rounds of many European newspapers, directed public attention to the newly discovered Assyrian royal palace, which Botta at first assigned to the Sassanian period. Then, in the autumn of 1845, the eagerly-looked-for funds were at last obtained by the munificence of the English ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Stratford Canning (afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe), to whom the British Museum already owed the acquisition of the costly marbles of Halicarnassus. Thus, towards the end of the year 1845, Layard was able to begin the excavations. He set to work on the Nimrud pile of ruins, which lies a distance of five hours to the south of Mosul, and had previously attracted his attention when Botta was still in Mosul. He laboured under the greatest difficulties, far greater than those which Botta had to overcome—to see how far this statement is from exaggeration, Layard’s own account should be perused—the work having at first to be carried on in profound secrecy so as to excite as little suspicion as possible in the Turkish authorities and in the population.

It was not to be long before Layard’s efforts were crowned with success. By the end of November several bas-reliefs were laid bare, whose execution appeared to surpass even those of the sculptures of Khorsabad, and which were accompanied by cuneiform inscriptions. In spite of many interruptions the work proceeded rigorously, and manifold were the discoveries thus brought to light. One deserving of special interest was that of the gigantic head of one of the colossal winged lions, with men’s heads, which the Assyrians placed at the entrance of their palaces for the sake of spreading terror amongst the inhabitants of surrounding districts. For it was everywhere whispered and believed that none other than Nimrod in person had risen from the earth. All this had occurred in the spring of the year 1846. The funds for the excavations lasted till the middle of June 1847; and when Layard returned to Europe he had laid bare in Nimrud no less than three great Assyrian royal palaces, namely: the grand northwestern palace, which Asshurnazirpal had built (884-861 B.C.) on the ruins of an ancient structure (dating from Shalmaneser I, the founder of Calah, circa 1300 B.C.?); the central palace, probably built by Asshurnazirpal’s successor, Shalmaneser II (a predecessor of the biblical Shalmaneser), where was found the famous black obelisk; and lastly, Esarhaddon’s once magnificent southwestern palace (681-669 B.C.). The northwestern palace yielded the richest spoil: it was also far better preserved than the contents of Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad, where Botta had made his excavations. As Sir Stratford Canning had presented the British Museum with everything moveable which Layard had discovered and brought to light, even at the end of this first expedition of Layard’s, a collection of Assyrian antiquities (principally bas-reliefs and inscriptions), such as existed nowhere else, was despatched to London. The unwearied energy of the discoverer of Nineveh succeeded in taking it unhurt, first to Bassorah, from whence the valuable freight was forwarded to the ship—truly not the smallest part of the task he had begun so gloriously, and now still more gloriously accomplished.

The period which followed was employed by Layard in summarising the results obtained in a vigorous narrative, furnished with many illustrations, the work called Nineveh and its Remains, which was published just as Layard was on the point of going to Assyria for the second time—on this[606] occasion at the expense of the British Museum. The sensation which the book created in England was enormous, and its most important result was that henceforth the government turned its attention to the excavations. So in 1849 Layard was given leave of absence from his diplomatic post at Constantinople for the purpose of making new discoveries on Assyrian soil, and Hormuzd Rassam, who had already been his assistant and happened just then to be in London, was sent after him (also officially).

If on the first expedition Layard had done little more than explore Nimrud (the ancient Calah), the labours of the second (1849-1851), were on the contrary practically limited to the mounds of ruins of Kuyunjik with Neby Yunus, the site of Nineveh itself. Here Botta had first begun his excavations, but entirely without success, for he had merely caused diggings to be made to the depth of a few feet, and without any method, instead of making his chief object the remains of the platform, on which the buildings he was seeking had been erected. And it was here that Layard, at the end of his first expedition, and after having been obliged to dig twenty feet down, had discovered Sennacherib’s southwestern palace (705-682 B.C.). But the real fruits of this discovery were now the object of the second undertaking. For if in this Layard was still occupied with Nimrud, the work there was only a species of gleaning, the excavations and discoveries in Arban, on the Khabur and in Bavian were, in comparison with the rest, only a short trial-trip, and the main thing still remained the minute investigation and laying bare of the great southwestern palace in Kuyunjik. It was not till this was finished that he employed the rest of his time and money in a visit to Babylonia (at the end of 1850), of which, however, Layard himself says “that they (i.e. the discoveries amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon)[607] were far fewer and of far less importance than he had expected”; he also gave the first exact description of the mounds of Niffer, the ancient Nippur, southeast of Babylon. All his experiences and all the results of this second expedition were set down by Layard in the Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, a work, seven hundred pages in length and with many illustrations, besides plans and maps, which appeared in London as early as the beginning of the year 1853.

This popular book had, like the former one, a prodigious success, and was shortly after translated into German; as a supplement to it Layard’s great publications were announced, namely, that magnificent work, the Monuments of Nineveh, and a volume of inscriptions which was the forerunner to the great work on inscriptions published by the British Museum in five volumes (1861-1884).

But to return to Layard’s excavations which he resumed in the middle of October, 1849, at the place where he had interrupted them two years before. It is simply impossible within a short space to give a clear idea of what Layard and his workmen, assisted by Hormuzd Rassam, brought to light before the middle of the year 1850 in that southwestern palace of Sennacherib which Asshurbanapal restored. Any one who would form a clear idea of it must peruse Layard’s magnificent descriptions of it for himself. Assyrian antiquity rose from the earth and grew more and more distinct, and so intelligible was the language of the hundreds of bas-reliefs, that, even without understanding the inscriptions, every one was in a position to construct for himself a tolerably clear picture of the manners and customs, the life and occupations, in short, the whole civilisation of the ancient Assyrians, and this merely from the illustrations in Layard’s two popular books. But the most important discovery made in this palace, indeed the most important in its results of all the Assyrian excavations, was the remains of a regular library of thousands of clay tablets, which were heaped up in two chambers, covering the floor a foot thick. These the restorer of the palace, the accomplished king Asshurbanapal (668 B.C., the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, and Asnapper of the Bible) had had collected, and had deposited them, partly here, partly (probably in duplicate) in other palaces, as in particular in the northern palace, which was also in Kuyunjik, and was discovered by Rassam. The tablets of gray and yellow clay found in the so-called Lion Room of Asshurbanapal’s northern palace, were in most cases broken into smaller or larger fragments, probably because in the general ruin they had fallen down from the upper story into the space in which they covered the ground; many, however, were still whole. Of course only later investigation could succeed in bringing the broken fragments together again, and then only partially; one of these tablets, restored by piecing together sixteen fragments, gives the Babylonian story of the Flood, which George Smith successfully recognised from amongst the thousands of scattered fragments; the reader will appreciate the condition in which most of these clay book-pages (to use a paradoxical expression) have come down to us. The size of the tablets seldom exceeds nine by six and a half inches; but many, especially tablets containing contracts, were considerably smaller. The greater number bore the inscription, “Series of tablets …, tablet number …; Palace of Asshurbanapal, king of the universe, king of Assyria …,” after which came a series of phrases, mostly stereotyped, which indicates the tablet in question as belonging to the library of Asshurbanapal, the great collector of ancient Babylonian literature in Assyrian character. In the restored tablet of the Flood, the place of the signature[608] is clearly recognisable on the first of the columns; it is the last of the columns, for they are always to be counted from right to left (instead of from left to right). But especially clear to the eye of a layman is the addition to the signature, which represents a kind of library mark, unlike that of the specially prized Ishtar hymn in two languages (S. M. 954, British Museum); the latter differs somewhat from the ordinary tenor of these signatures, inasmuch as a whole genealogy is put, instead of the sentence usual elsewhere; translated literally it runs:

He has written and engraved it like its original.

In general, however, these signatures ran as follows:

After which, in some examples, there follows:

The contents of the tablets in which Asshurbanapal caused the wisdom of the god Nabu (identified by the ancients with Mercury) to be written of in this fashion, were varied to an extent scarcely conceivable. They contained the primitive spells and formulas for oaths of the people of Sumer, as well as the somewhat later hymns to the gods, and penitential psalms of the Accadian population of northern Babylonia, almost all of them with interlinear translations into the Semitic language of ancient Babylon; also legends of Semitic character and epic poems almost as old as the Accadian hymns; astronomical and astrological texts; historical inscriptions (as, for instance, those of Agum-kakrime and the ancient Sargon); chronological lists, calendars, and a great deal besides; all of which was collected by Asshurbanapal and by him handed down to posterity. It is hard to say in what direction the literary pieces thus preserved fail to cast a light on the ancient Babylonians into whose cultivation the Assyrians were, indeed, once initiated, and to whom they were in all essentials indebted for their own; it is certain that we should now be acquainted with no single one of those primitive magic verses, had not Asshurbanapal had them written out afresh. And what should we know of the Sumerians and Accadians without these songs? But this is not enough. A great part of the Asshurbanapal library consists[609] of philosophical aids to the knowledge and acquisition of the Sumerio-Accadian language, as well as of the Semitic Assyrio-Babylonian, and to the writing (the so-called syllabary) as well as to the spoken language; these aids include vocabularies, grammatical paradigms, and even collections of phrases in two languages.

Whilst Layard was exploring the southwestern palace at Kuyunjik, adding undreamt-of treasures to those acquired in his first expedition to the country, and finding quantities of new cuneiform texts of the so-called third species of the Assyrian genus, so that he seemed to have been the first to gather the materials for the deciphering of this kind of cuneiform writing, it had been already completed, at least in the main, by the labours of Saulcy (1849) and, above all, by those of Henry Rawlinson (1847-1851). Layard’s book, Nineveh and its Remains, which appeared in 1849, had already introduced us into the midst of Assyrian antiquity, although the inscriptions which accompanied the sculptures could not yet give us any further information elucidating them. But in the Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, which appeared in the beginning of 1853, we already find the correct interpretation of several Assyrian names of kings, countries, towns, and gods, and even the correct rendering of the substance of connected historical inscriptions, which Layard owed to the information communicated in the interval by Henry Rawlinson and the Irishman, E. Hincks, who had also brought great acuteness to bear on this department of study. The numerous fresh historical documents which Layard brought with him could not have appeared at a more favourable time; above all, the first of the chests containing Asshurbanapal’s library could not have entered London at a better moment. For, once a basis was established for the reading of the cuneiform writing of the Babylonian and Assyrian languages, all that was needed to advance along the path so successfully entered upon was new texts, and these now began to flow in, in abundance.c

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LATER DISCOVERIES IN BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

The work of exploration rested entirely between the years 1855 and 1872. Great progress was made, however, in the decipherment of inscriptions and the popularisation of the results, and the mind of the public was prepared to appreciate the greatness of the work that was to follow.

The importance of George Smith’s decipherment in 1872 of the Babylonian story of the Deluge was at once recognised, and led to his being sent to Nineveh in January, 1873, under the auspices of the Daily Telegraph. As soon as he had discovered some further fragments of the deluge story, however, the newspaper was satisfied, and he was recalled. On a second expedition, sent out in the same year by the British Museum, Smith made no startling discoveries. Smith’s work, while small in amount when compared with that of the early explorers, brought to light much valuable material, and aroused great enthusiasm in England. The British Museum sent him on a third expedition in 1876; but he was prevented from making any excavations, and died of fever on his way back.

The next expedition, that of Hormuzd Rassam in 1877, resulted, among other things, in the identification of the site of Sippar, and the discovery of numerous interesting inscriptions and of some beautifully ornamented inscribed bronze plates that had adorned the gates of the palace of Shalmaneser II.

In this same year, 1877, M. Ernest de Sarzec, then just appointed French consul at Bassorah on the Persian Gulf, began that series of brilliant explorations which he has carried on more or less continuously ever since. His enthusiasm for archæological research was backed by an extensive knowledge of the conditions of the country, and his efforts were rewarded with an unusual degree of success from the very start.

The first four years were devoted to an extensive and systematic excavation of Telloh, a great mound about five miles from the Shatt-el-khai, in southern Babylonia, and now identified with the ancient Shirpurla. The first season was marked by the discovery of two large terra-cotta cylinders, twenty-four inches long and twelve in diameter. The inscriptions on these cylinders, which contained fully two thousand lines each, were the longest then known from an early period. By the end of the four seasons of work a great temple had been uncovered, one hundred and seventy-five by one hundred feet in dimensions, and built on a mound from sixteen to twenty feet high. The bricks of the outer wall, which was five feet thick, were one foot square and bore the name Gudea. The objects found in the interior of the temple have proved very important to early Babylonian history. One room contained eight statues of an early period, all headless, however, having been mutilated by barbarians of a later time.

Scarcely less important was De Sarzec’s discovery in 1894 of a chamber in which were found thirty thousand tablets. While a considerable proportion of them were religious documents, most of these tablets were commercial, agricultural, and industrial archives.

The Louvre has profited greatly by the work of De Sarzec, for a large part of his discoveries has found its way thither.

The American expeditions have been among the most successful ones in this field. The Wolfe expedition of 1884-1885—so called from Miss Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, who defrayed its expenses—confined its work to a thorough exploration of the whole field, not only visiting the sites of previous excavations, but examining many new mounds as well. The[611] succeeding expeditions have been sent out under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. The first one, in 1888-1889, under the direction of Dr. John P. Peters, with Professors H. V. Hilprecht and R. F. Harper as Assyriologists, began excavations at Niffer, the site of ancient Nippur. They had many difficulties with native tribes and Turkish officials, but succeeded in making a trigonometrical survey of all the mounds and obtaining a great number of antiquities of all sorts. Dr. Peters, however, modestly characterises the expedition as “more or less of a failure.”

In 1890 work was begun again. Thousands of tablets and various kinds of objects were obtained, and were all sent to the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. Professor Hilprecht was sent to Constantinople to catalogue the finds. He did the work with great skill and tact, and the Sultan repaid the University of Pennsylvania for his services by the gift of a large part of the collection.

The third expedition was sent out in 1893 under the direction of Mr. J. H. Haynes, who had been the business manager of the first two. With a single brief interruption of two months in 1894 he carried on the work steadily until 1896, accomplishing what no European had ever ventured to attempt before. This expedition and the fourth one, which set out under Haynes in 1899 and was joined by Hilprecht in 1900, procured many thousands of tablets and antiquities of other kinds. These finds have enriched the store of Babylonian literature with vast quantities of texts, religious, commercial, and historical.

The first German expedition, in 1897, like the first American, simply explored Babylonia and Assyria. Then in 1899 Dr. Robert Koldewey, who had been a member of the first expedition, accompanied by Dr. Bruno Meissner, went out under the auspices of the German Orient Society. They went to work at the mound of El-Kasr, Babylon, which covers the remains of the palace of Nebuchadrezzar. Their first success was in the finding of a new Hittite inscription and many tablets of the Neo-Babylonian period. Great results may be expected from their future work.

The Turks, themselves, have naturally the best opportunity for carrying on the work of exploration, for they can count upon the support instead of the opposition of the officials, and can keep the natives under control. Thus far one expedition has been sent out. It was under the direction of Father Scheil, a distinguished Assyriologist, a French Dominican. Its complete success shows that if the Turkish government can once be aroused to the importance of the work, greater discoveries may be expected.

One of the most important discoveries of cuneiform inscriptions was made at Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt in 1888. From these tablets, which are letters and despatches of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV and of many monarchs of western Asia, much valuable chronological material has been obtained, as well as much light upon social relations.

The great discoveries of the past thirty years are but an inspiration to further exploration. The work is bound to be carried on until the buried cities have been completely brought to light again.ad

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THE RESULTS OF THE EXCAVATIONS

We have followed the story of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria with some detail because of the unique character of the record. It remains now to examine the results of these excavations in their bearings upon the story of history. For, of course, it is the material supplied by the workers in this field rather than the work itself which has pertinence in the present connection.

Great numbers of historical documents have been restored to us, sufficing, as has already been suggested, to rebuild the history of the all but forgotten nations. Such historical documents as are not to be found in connection with Greece or Rome, or even of the civilisation of the Middle Ages down to about the tenth century A.D., are supplied us from the ruins of the Babylonian and Assyrian cities. These documents, as already pointed out, are in the form of inscriptions on fragments of brick. These inscriptions, in an altogether unknown character, were at first enigmatic, but oriental scholarship soon availed to decipher them. The story of this decipherment must be outlined here for comparison with the account of the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which has already been presented. In no other cases except these two has the historian been called upon to deal with a great mass of documents written in an absolutely dead language. It must be remembered that the so-called dead languages of the classical world were never really forgotten. All through the Middle Ages there were numberless scholars who had an expert knowledge of Greek and Latin. Indeed, these languages were the current medium of scholarly intercourse throughout the dark ages. But the Babylonian and Assyrian languages, like the Egyptian, were dead in the fullest significance of the term; that is to say, they were utterly unknown to any human being for a period of more than two thousand years. Their restoration was one of the marvels of nineteenth-century scholarship; and while the details of this feat of scholarship do not properly come within the province of the historian in the narrower sense, they have such universal interest that we shall do well to present at least their outline here.

Before turning to the story of decipherment, however, it will be well to gain an idea as to the number and the variety and character of the historical documents in question. And perhaps the best way to do this will be to[613] take a glance at the contents of the Assyrian collections in the British Museum, giving particular attention to the marvellous library of King Asshurbanapal, one of the last of the great rulers of Assyria—a remarkable collection of books, the discovery of which has been already referred to in the previous section. Nothing could give one a more vivid realisation of the character of this ancient oriental civilisation than the most casual glance at the sample books from this old library. Having inspected, however casually, this marvellous set of documents, one is prepared to take up the chronological history of the Babylonians and the Assyrians with a fresh interest based upon the comprehension that this people, so long regarded as scarcely more than mythical, possessed a civilisation strangely comparable in many essential features to the civilisation of our own time.a

TREASURES FROM NINEVEH

The most casual wanderer in the British Museum can hardly fail to notice two pairs of massive sculptures, in the one case winged bulls, in the other, winged lions, both human-headed, which guard the entrance to the Egyptian hall, close to the Rosetta stone. Each pair of these weird creatures once guarded an entrance to the palace of a king in the famous city of Nineveh. As one stands before them his mind is carried back over some twenty-seven intervening centuries, to the days when the “Cedar of Lebanon” was “fair in his greatness” and the scourge of Israel. A wave of emotion sweeps over one when he first sees them, and Byron’s stirring lines, reminiscent of school-day oratory, ring in the memory:

The Assyrian! The ruler of Nineveh! For two thousand five hundred years he was only a name and a memory; yet here stand great monuments to testify to the reality of his sometime greatness.

These huge lions are pertinent in the present connection because of the inscriptions that are graven across their pedestals. A glance reveals the strange characters in which these records are written, graven neatly in straight lines across the stone, and looking, to casual inspection, like nothing else so much as random flights of arrow-heads. The resemblance is so striking that this is sometimes called the arrow-headed character, though it is more generally known as the wedge or cuneiform character. A strange writing this. It seems almost incredible that it can really be susceptible of interpretation and translation into a modern language. And, indeed, the feat of interpreting it was one of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century scholarship; but of this we shall have more to say in a moment.

But importance aside, what an interest must now attach to objects with such a history as belongs to these! The very sculptures before us, for example, were perhaps seen by Jonah when he made that famous voyage to Nineveh some seven or eight hundred years B.C. A little later the Babylonian and the Mede revolted from Assyrian tyranny, and descended upon the fair city of Nineveh, and almost literally levelled it to the ground. But these great sculptures, among other things, escaped destruction, and at once hidden and preserved by the accumulating débris of the centuries, they stood there age after age, their very existence quite forgotten. When[614] Xenophon marched past their site with the ill-starred Expedition of the Ten Thousand, in the year 400 B.C., he saw only a mound which seemed to mark the site of some ancient ruin; but so ephemeral is fame that the Greek did not suspect that he looked upon the site of that city which only two centuries before had been the mistress of the world.

So ephemeral is fame! And yet the moral scarcely holds in the sequel; for we of to-day, in this new, undreamed-of Western world, behold these mementoes of Assyrian greatness, fresh from their twenty-five hundred years of entombment, and with them records which restore to us the history of that long-forgotten people in such detail as it was not known to any previous generation since the fall of Nineveh. For two thousand five hundred years no one saw these treasures or knew that they existed. One hundred generations of men came and went without once pronouncing the names of Kings Asshurnazirpal or Asshurbanapal. And to-day, after centuries of oblivion, these names are restored to history, and, thanks to the character of their monuments, are assured a permanency of fame that can almost defy time itself. It would be nothing strange, but rather in keeping with their previous mutations of fortune, if the names of Asshurnazirpal and Asshurbanapal should be familiar household words to future generations that have forgotten the existence of an Alexander, a Cæsar, and a Napoleon. For when Macaulay’s prospective New Zealander explores the ruins of the British Museum, the records of the ancient Assyrians will presumably be there unscathed, to tell their story as they have told it to our generation, although every manuscript and printed book may have gone the way of fragile textures.

But the past of the Assyrian sculptures is quite necromantic enough without conjuring for them a necromantic future. The story of their restoration is like a brilliant romance of history. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century the inquiring student could learn in an hour or so all that was known in fact and in fable of the renowned city of Nineveh. He had but to read a few chapters of the Bible and a few pages of Diodorus to exhaust the important literature of the subject. If he turned also to the pages of Herodotus and Xenophon, of Justin and Ælianus, these served chiefly to confirm the suspicion that the Greeks themselves knew almost nothing more of the history of their famed oriental forerunners.

The current fables told of a first king Ninus and his wonderful queen, Semiramis; of Sennacherib, the conqueror; of the effeminate Sardanapalus, who neglected the warlike ways of his ancestors, but perished gloriously at the last, with Nineveh itself, in a self-imposed holocaust. And that was all. How much of this was history, how much myth, no man could say; and for all any one suspected to the contrary, no man could ever know. And to-day the contemporary records of the city are before us in such profusion as no other nation of antiquity, save Egypt alone, can at all rival. Whole libraries of Babylonian documents are at hand that were written twenty or even thirty centuries before our era. These, be it understood, are the original books themselves, not copies. The author of that remote time speaks to us directly, hand to eye, without intermediary transcriber. And there is not a line of any Hebrew or Greek inscriptions of a like age that has been preserved to us; there is little enough that can match these ancient books by a thousand years. When one reads of Moses or Isaiah, Homer, Hesiod, or Herodotus, he is but following the transcription—often unquestionably faulty, and probably never in all parts perfect—of successive copyists of later generations. The oldest known copy of the Bible, for example, dates[615] from the fourth century A.D.—1000 years after the last Assyrian records were made, and read, and buried, and forgotten.

As to the earlier Mesopotamian records, they date back some 5000—perhaps 7000—years B.C.: at least 1000 years before the period assigned by Archbishop Usher’s long-accepted Chronology for the creation of the world itself. Solomon, who lived about 1000 B.C., is accredited with the declaration that “of the making of many books there is no end.” Modern exegesists tell us that it was not Solomon, but a later Alexandrian interloper, who actually coined the phrase; but nevertheless it appears that the saying would have been perfectly intelligible, in Mesopotamia, not merely to Solomon’s contemporaries, but to generations that lived long before the Jewish nation, as such, came into existence. At all events, there was at least one king of Assyria—namely, Asshurbanapal—who lived only a few generations after Solomon, and whose palace boasted a library of some 10,000 volumes—a library, if you please, in which the books were numbered and shelved systematically, and classified, and cared for by an official librarian. From this library, records have come to us during the past half-century that have reconstructed the history of Asiatic antiquity.

If you would care to see some of these strange documents, you have but a little way to go from the site of the winged lion here in the British Museum. Meantime, there are other sculptures here which you can hardly pass unnoticed. As we pass the human-headed lions and enter the hall of Asshurnazirpal, we shall see other evidences of Assyrian greatness that might easily lead our thoughts astray from the writing. Here, forming the wall, are bas-reliefs on which the famous scene of the lion hunt is shown; a little farther[616] on are all manner of war scenes; and there some domestic incidents, the making of bread or a like comestible, and its baking in an oven; and there again is the interior of a stable with a man gravely grooming a horse much as it might be done in any stable to-day.

All these must not be allowed to distract our attention, for these graphic illustrations have nothing directly to do with writing. Here, however, at the end of the hall, are some other bas-reliefs more pertinent to our present inquiry. That winged god, for example, carrying a fawn, has a fine flight of arrows across the background and figures alike, differing in the latter regard from the lion we have just left. In the hall just beyond are some illustrations of a different combination of picture and text. Here is the famous obelisk of Shalmaneser, which, like all the things thus far noted in the Assyrian collection, was found by Sir Henry Layard at Nineveh. It is virtually an illustrated book, telling in word and text of the conquest of many countries by King Shalmaneser II.

The figures of the upper row report the payment of tribute by “Sua of Gilzani, who brought silver, gold, lead, vessels of copper, horses, and dromedaries.” It will be observed, of course, that only one side of the obelisk is here shown. The other three sides in each case depict other phases of the payment of the tribute by the same conquered enemy. The second tier of figures is of peculiar interest, because it shows the payment of tribute by “Yaua, the son of Khumri.” This is, as the Bible student interprets it, “Jehu, the son of Omri.” The conquered Israelite brings “silver and gold, lead and bowls, dishes, cups, and other vessels of gold,” and the forms of these vessels, as well as the costumes of the Hebrews themselves, are well shown in the illustrations. The third row of figures represents the “payment of the tribute of the land of Musri, consisting of dromedaries, buffaloes, elephants, apes, and other animals.” The grotesque figures of the alleged apes, with their altogether human heads, are suggestive as showing how these strange foreign animals appealed to the imagination of the Assyrian artist, causing him to depart from that fine realism which he brought to bear upon the delineation of more familiar animals. The fourth set of pictures shows the payment of tribute of the land of Sukhi, and the fifth a not dissimilar tribute from the country of Patin. The inscriptions at the top and base of the obelisk give details of the conquests, recording among other things how Shalmaneser captured 1121 chariots and 470 battle horses and the whole camp of Hazael, king of Damascus.

Perhaps the most curious example of economy of material in a makeshift book that the Assyrian collection at the British Museum has to show, is illustrated in the figure of the god Nabu, which forms part of the Nineveh collection, and which stands in the hall just beyond the obelisk of Shalmaneser. Here, as a glance at the illustration will show, the skirt of the robe of the human figure is used as a ground for an elaborate inscription. The effect is rather decorative and distinctly unique. This figure has the further interest of affording an illustration of what the Assyrian artist could do when he adopted the expedient, for him unusual, of working in the round. The great masterpieces of Assyrian art were modelled in bas-relief. Occasionally, however, the artist attempted the full figure, as in the present case; but it can hardly be claimed that the success of this is at all comparable with that attained by the other method. There are low reliefs in the hunting scenes contained in the dining-hall of Asshurbanapal, as represented here in the British Museum, that are real works of art. The wounded lioness dragging her haunches, the hunted goats, the pacing wild[617] asses, are veritable masterpieces. No such claim can be made for the god Nabu or for any other full statue that the excavations of Nineveh have revealed. But on the other hand the texture of the skirt of this god gives it an abiding interest of a unique character.

A further interest attaches to this statue, as to many others of the Assyrian monuments, because of its bearing upon the religion of that famous people. Until the discovery of these long-buried monuments, practically all that was known of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was contained in the pages of Herodotus. Strange tales he tells of what he saw in the temples of Babylon, where, as he alleges, all the women of the city, of whatever class or rank, were obliged at least once in a lifetime to prostitute themselves for hire. The inscriptions on the monuments tell us nothing of such practical phases of worship as this, but they do show that the Assyrians were an intensely religious people, closely comparable in that regard to their cousins the Hebrews. Their religion, too, it would appear, was of that firmly grasped self-sufficient kind which puts aside all doubt; which assumes as a primordial fact that one’s own view is right; that one’s gods are the only true gods, and that all the outside world must be regarded as one’s proper prey. A further illustration of this phase of the subject will claim our attention when we come to examine the religious writings of the Assyrians a little more in detail.

Another illustration of a curiously Assyrian combination of art and letters is shown in the sculptured lion that guards the entrance to the next hall. This lion is a memento of the same reign as that human-headed one at the other doorway, but it is very different in workmanship, and clearly the product of another artist. For one thing it is a veritable lion, not a mythical compound beast, except, indeed, that it shares with the other the peculiarity of a fifth leg. Assyrian tastes seem to have required that four legs should be visible from whatever point of view the statue of an animal was regarded; hence the anomaly. For the rest, this gigantic beast shows many points of realistic delineation, and it is artistically full of interest. The head in particular expresses feeling in a most unequivocal way.

But the most curious characteristic of this sculpture is the way in which the writing is carried from the slab right across the body of the animal itself, and also across its front legs. Perhaps this was done at the command of the king, merely as a convenient expedient that all the desired records of the conquest might be given a place, but the effect at a little distance is curiously as if the artist had striven to get the feeling of hair in a stiff and formal manner, in keeping with the conventional rendering of the mane. Again it has been suggested that the writing has been carried across the body of the lion to safeguard it. There was a not unusual custom among ancient monarchs of scraping out the inscription of a predecessor and supplanting it with one’s own. So great a monarch as Ramses II, in Egypt, did not scruple to do this, and a remarkable case is shown on an Arabian temple where the conscienceless monarch actually substitutes his own name[618] for the correct one of the builder, in a tablet claiming authorship of the temple of which the tablet is a part. That the kings of Assyria had occasion to fear such jugglery is shown by the inscriptions on the book tablets in the royal library at Nineveh, where Asshurbanapal, after telling that the books are of his library, calls a curse upon any one who shall ever put another name beside his own. Perhaps, then, King Asshurnazirpal thought to transmit a record of his deeds more securely to posterity by inscribing them across the back of this lion, for doubtless the sculpture was considered a masterpiece, and the king felt, we may suppose, that artistic taste might prevent a sacrilege which mere conscience would not interdict.

THE LIBRARY OF A KING OF NINEVEH

We come now to the place in the British Museum in which some of these treasures of the old Assyrian king are guarded. They occupy part of the series of cases placed down the centre of the room known as the Nineveh Gallery. Perhaps it is not too much to speak of these collections as forming the most extraordinary set of documents of all the rare treasures of the British Museum, for it includes not books alone, but public and private letters, business announcements, marriage contracts—in a word, all the species of written records that enter into the everyday life of an intelligent and cultured community.

But by what miracle have such documents been preserved through all these centuries? A glance makes the secret evident. It is simply a case of time-defying materials. Each one of these Assyrian documents appears to be, and in reality is, nothing more or less than an inscribed fragment of brick, having much the colour and texture of a weathered terra-cotta tile of modern manufacture. These slabs are usually oval or oblong in length, and an inch or so in thickness. Each of them was originally a portion of brick clay, on which the scribe indented the flights of arrow-heads with some sharp-cornered instrument, after which the document was made permanent by baking. They are somewhat fragile, of course, as all bricks are, and many of them have been more or less crumbled in the destruction of the palace at Nineveh; but to the ravages of mere time they are as nearly invulnerable as almost anything in nature. Hence it is that these records of a remote civilisation have been preserved to us, while the similar records of such later[619] civilisations as the Grecian have utterly perished; much as the flint implements of the cave-dweller come to us unchanged, while the iron implements of a far more recent age have crumbled away.

Consider even in the most casual way the mere samples that are exhibited here in the museum. This first case, the label tells us, contains tablets—sample leaves, if you will—from the famous “Creation” and “Deluge” series. That is to say, from the book which has been called the Chaldean Genesis, and which excited such a furor of attention when George Smith of the British Museum first deciphered part of its contents, because it seemed to give so striking a clew to the origin of the sacred book of the Hebrews. The Hebrew legends are very differently received to-day from what they were even fifty years ago, thanks to the advance of science; but these Chaldean stories of the creation and destruction of mankind still have absorbing interest as historical documents in the story of the mental evolution of our race, both for what they teach of the ideas of remote generations of men, and for what they taught the generation of our immediate predecessors about the true status of comparative mythology.

It will be recalled that the Assyrians were Semites closely related to the Hebrews. Indeed, tradition held that Father Abraham, in common with the ancestors of the Assyrians, came from the land of the Chaldeans. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that these sacred books of the Assyrians are replete with the same traditions and give expression to much the same cast of thought as the sacred books of the Hebrews. Thus, here we have a closely comparable account of the creation of the world out of primeval chaos and of the destruction of all but a favoured few in a universal deluge. Even the story of the sending out from the ark of first one bird and then another, until finally the raven found a place to alight, when the ark itself had stranded on a mountain top, is reproduced with such closeness of detail as practically to demonstrate a common origin of the two traditions.

Here, again, is a story of how Sargon, an early king of Agade, was cast away, Moses-like, in a basket, to be rescued from the waters of the Euphrates by a compassionate discoverer of his plight. There is even a tablet which gives intimations of the story of the building of the Tower of Babel. And with it all there is imbued the same black, dreadful view of life that actuated the authors of the Old Testament. Always we are made to feel the threat of the angry deity; always this religion is a religion of fear. Generosity, brotherly love, compassion, morality—in a broad sense these words play but little part in the terminology of the Semite. The Semitic conqueror was notorious for his cruelty. He loved to persecute his victim, to crucify him, to flay him alive. The writers of the Hebrew and of the Assyrian books alike record these deeds without a shudder. They show to the psychologist a race lacking in imagination, which is the mother of sympathy, but imbued through and through with egotism. The legends of the sacred books give further evidence of these same traits. Here before us, among the other tablets just noted, are the famous stories of the descent of Ishtar, the Goddess of Love, into the nether regions, and of the trials and perils which she encountered there, and those that fell upon the outside world because of her absence. It is recorded that when finally a messenger was sent from a superior power demanding her release, the powers of the nether world gave her up unwillingly, but retained the innocent messenger to torture in her stead; and it probably never occurred to the mind of the Assyrian soothsayer that it might have been within the power of the superior gods to release the innocent messenger as well.

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Another famous set of tablets records the adventures of Gilgamish, whose heroic trials and mighty deeds suggest the Hercules of the Greeks. All in all, these religious and mythological texts give us the closest insight into the moral nature of the Assyrian, not merely during the period of Asshurbanapal, but for many generations before, since these sacred books are in the main but copies of old Babylonian ones, dating from the most remote periods of antiquity.

The tablets of the next case illustrate a different phase of Assyrian mental activity. They are virtually books of reference, and schoolbooks—that is, “Grammatical Tablets, Lists of Cuneiform Signs, Explanatory Lists of Words, etc.—drawn up for use in the Royal Library at Nineveh.” They include a tablet of “words and phrases used in legal documents, to serve as grammatical examples; one column being in the Sumero-Accadian language, the other an Assyrian translation; also lists of a verbal formation, and an explanatory list of words”—a dictionary, if you please! Even more remarkable is a tablet giving a list of picture characters with the archaic forms of cuneiform signs to which they were thought to correspond; this list being supplemented by another in which the archaic forms themselves are interpreted with the “modern” equivalent. This tablet shows that, in the belief of the ancient Assyrian, the cuneiform character had been developed, at a remote epoch, from a purely historical writing (as was doubtless the case), but that the exact line of this development had faded from the memories of men in the latter-day epoch of the seventh century B.C.

In the case beyond are tablets with lists of “Names of Birds, Plants, Bronze Objects, Articles of Clothing, etc., for reference as an aid to writing literary compositions.” Then lists of officials, and other documents relating to the history of Babylonia-Assyria, including historical inscriptions of Sennacherib. Beyond, a set of letters, public and private, mostly inscribed on oval bits of clay, three or four inches long, and sometimes provided with envelopes of the same material. Of this numerous collection of letters, the one that attracts most popular attention is that in which King Sennacherib refers to certain objects given by him to his son Esarhaddon. This is commonly known as the “will of Sennacherib.” Near this is another letter that is interesting because it is provided with a baked-clay envelope, into which the letter slipped as a kernel of a nut into its shell. The envelope bears the inscription, “To the King, my Lord, from Asshur Ritsua,” and it is authenticated by two impressions of the writer’s seal.

This use of seals, by-the-bye, is quite general, particularly in the case of official documents. Sometimes, as in the case of a contract tablet shown here, the witness, in lieu of seal, gives the stamp of his finger nail, this being equivalent, I suppose, to “John Doe, his mark.” It is hardly to be supposed that the average Assyrian could write any more than the average Greek or Roman could, or, for that matter, the average European of a century ago. The professional scribe did the writing, of course, whence the necessity for seals to assure authenticity of even ordinary letters. Doubtless the art of gem engraving, which the old Chaldeans carried to amazing perfection, followed by the Greeks and Romans, has been allowed to decline in recent generations largely because the increasing spread of education—not to mention gummed envelopes—made seals less and less a necessity. Perhaps the art may be revived in the age of the typewriter. But if one stops to speak of seals, he could hardly be restrained from rushing off to the wonderful collection in the gem department of the British Museum, where the Græco-Roman intaglios would drive all thought of other collections[621] from his head,—though even there the Cyprian finds would lead him back irrevocably to the Babylonian model,—whereas, for the moment, our true concern is not with seals of any sort, but with the documents they are purposed to authenticate.

These documents are of the strangest assortment; and yet not strange, so precisely similar are they to the official records of modern communal existence. Thus here is one tablet, of about the year 650 B.C., recording the sale of a house. There another tells of the leasing of certain property, for a term of six years, for twelve shekels of silver. And, capping the climax, here are tablets recording the loan of money, veritable notes, with even the rate of interest—twenty per cent—carefully prescribed. One learns that the money broker did a thriving business in old Nineveh. How near to us those days are, after all!

And nearer yet they seem when we pass to the cases of the tablets of omens and forecasts based upon the position of the stars and planets, the actions of animals and reptiles, the flight of birds, and the appearance of newly born offspring. For when superstition is in question all races are kin, and all times are contemporary. The European of to-day who shudders when he sees the moon over his left shoulder, is brother in spirit to the Assyrian astrologer who used this “astrolabe” to forecast the events of his own immediate future. And these incantations, religious and magical rites, prayers, hymns, litanies—do they not make it clear that the Assyrian was indeed our elder brother? Does this lifted veil then show us a vista of three millennia, or only of as many generations? At least it serves to bring home to us—and I doubt if any other exhibit could do it as forcibly—how slow, how snail-like is the rate of human progress. Yet, after all, how vain this moralising; for who does not know that the day when Nineveh saw its prime was only the yesterday of human civilisation? If one doubted it before, he can doubt no longer, since he has wandered down the rooms in which the relics from the library of Asshurbanapal are exhibited, glancing thus casually at the accommodating English labels.

Naturally, the stock of material bearing upon this topic has been constantly increased by new explorations, notably by those of Oppert at Nineveh, and of De Sarzec at Telloh, by which the French Government has supplemented the early collections of the pioneer of the work, Botta; by various German exploring companies; and, more recently, by the American exploring expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, under Dr. John P. Peters, which secured such important results at Nippur. But the greatest repository of all still remains that which Layard and his assistant and successor in the work, Rassam, followed by George Smith, secured for the British Museum. The other collections afford important sidelights; but the main story of Assyrian life and history, as at present known to us, is told only by the books from the wonderful library of the palace of Asshurbanapal at Nineveh; and these can be studied only in the British Museum, or in the publications which the workers of that institution have from time to time given to the world.

After glancing at these documents for the first time, none but a heedless person can fail to have brought home to him a more vivid picture of the life of antiquity, and a truer historical perspective than he can previously have possessed. For more than two thousand years Greek culture has dominated the world, and it has been the custom to speak of the Greek as if he were the veritable inventor of art and of culture; but these documents have led to a truer view. Here one looks back, as it were, over the heads of the Greeks, and catches glimpses of a people that possessed a high civilisation[622] when the Greeks were still an upstart nation, only working their way out of barbarism.

Now it appears to be nothing less than a law of nature that every nation should look with contempt upon every other nation which it regards as contemporary. With a highly artistic people, whose chief pride is their artistic taste, this feeling reaches its climax. The Greek attitude in this regard is proverbial. But it is just as fixed a law of nature that every nation should look with reverence upon some elder civilisation. The Romans adopted the Greek word “barbarian,” and applied it to all other nations—except the Greeks. The Greeks did not return the compliment. For them the Romans were parvenus—parvenus to be looked on with hatred and contempt. I doubt not the Athenian child gave the deadliest possible insult to his playfellow when he called him a Roman; just as the Parisian child of to-day reserves the appellation “anglais” as the bitterest anathema of his vocabulary. But when the Greek turned his eyes in the other direction, and looked out upon Egyptian and Babylonian civilisation, he was gazing into the past, and his contempt changed to reverence, precisely as with the Frenchman of to-day, who looks back with reverence upon the civilisation of ancient Greece and Rome, while utterly contemning all phases of the nineteenth-century civilisation save his own.

It was gladly admitted by the Greeks that these oriental civilisations had flowered while Greek culture was yet in the bud. Solon, the law-giver, was reported to have travelled in Egypt, and to have been mildly patronised by the Egyptian priests as the representative of an infant race. Herodotus, though ostensibly writing of the Persian war, devotes whole sections of his history to Egypt, and accepts, as did his countrymen, the Egyptian claims to immense antiquity without a scruple. Plato even resided for some years in Egypt, as Diodorus tells us, in the hope of gaining an insight into the mysteries of oriental philosophy.

Regarding the Assyrio-Babylonians, apparently hardly any story was too fanciful to gain a measure of credence with the classical world. Herodotus, to be sure, only credits the Assyrians with ruling for five hundred and twenty years before the overthrow of Nineveh; and Diodorus, following Ctesias, raises the figure only to about one thousand four hundred years. But these figures were probably based on a vague comprehension that Assyria proper had a relatively late period of flowering, as was, indeed, the fact; and the rumours regarding the age of Babylonian civilisation as a whole may be best illustrated by recalling that Cicero thought it necessary to express his scepticism regarding a claim, seemingly prevalent in his time, that Babylonian monuments preserve astronomical observations dating back over a period of two hundred and seventy thousand years. Pliny, on the other hand, quoting “Epigenes, a writer of first-rate authority,” claims for the astronomical records only a period of seven hundred and twenty years, noting also that Berosus and Critodemus still further limit the period to four hundred and eighty years. But the very range of numbers shows how utterly vague were the notions involved; and Pliny himself draws the inference of “the eternal use of letters” among the Babylonians, indicating that even the minimum period took the matter beyond the range of western history.

But for that matter nothing could be more explicit than the testimony of Diodorus, who, writing some three centuries after what we now speak of as the “golden age” of Greece, plainly indicates that not Greece but Mesopotamia was looked to in his day as the classic land of culture. And we[623] of to-day are enabled—the first of any generation in our era—to catch glimpses of the data on which that estimate was based, and to understand, by the witness of our own eyes, that the fabled glory of ancient Assyria was no myth, but a very tangible reality.

HOW THE ASSYRIAN BOOKS WERE READ

But all along we have followed the story of these strange books, taking for granted their meaning as interpreted on the labels, and ignoring for the moment the great marvel about them, which is not that we have the material documents themselves, but that we have a knowledge of their actual contents. The flights of arrow-heads on wall, on slab, or tiny brick have surely a meaning; but how has any one guessed that meaning? These must be words—but what words? The hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were mysterious in all conscience; yet, after all, their symbols have a certain suggestiveness, whereas there is nothing that seems to promise a mental leverage in the unbroken succession of these cuneiform dashes. Yet the Assyrian scholar of to-day can interpret these strange records almost as readily and as surely as the classical scholar interprets a Greek manuscript. And this evidences one of the greatest triumphs of nineteenth-century scholarship; for, since almost two thousand years, no man has lived, previous to our century, to whom these strange inscriptions would not have been as meaningless as they are to the most casual stroller who looks on them with vague wonderment here in the museum to-day. For the Assyrian language, like the Egyptian, was veritably a dead language; not, like Greek and Latin, merely passed from practical everyday use to the closet of the scholar, but utterly and absolutely forgotten by all the world. Such being the case, it is nothing less than marvellous that it should have been restored.

It is but fair to add that this restoration probably never would have been effected with Assyrian or with Egyptian had the language, in dying, left no cognate successor; for the powers of modern linguistry, though great, are not actually miraculous. But, fortunately, a language once developed is not blotted out in toto; it merely outlives its usefulness and is gradually supplanted, its successor retaining many traces of its origin. So, just as Latin, for example, has its living representatives in Italian and the other Romance tongues, the language of Assyria is represented by cognate Semitic languages. As it chances, however, these have been of aid rather in the later stages of Assyrian study than at the very outset; for the first clew to the message of the cuneiform writing came through a slightly different channel.

Curiously enough, it was a trilingual inscription that gave the clew, as in the case of the Rosetta stone; though with a very striking difference withal. The trilingual inscription now in question, instead of being a small portable monument, covers the surface of a massive bluff at Behistun,[624] in western Persia. Moreover, all three of its inscriptions are in cuneiform character, and all three are in languages that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were absolutely unknown. This inscription itself, as a striking monument of unknown import, had been seen by successive generations. Tradition ascribed it, as we learn from Ctesias, through Diodorus, to the fabled Assyrian queen, Semiramis. Tradition is quite at fault in this; but it is only recently that knowledge has availed to set it right. The inscription, as is now known, was really written about the year 515 B.C., at the instance of Darius I, king of Persia, some of whose deeds it recounts in the three chief languages of his widely scattered subjects.

The man who, at the actual risk of life and limb, copied this wonderful inscription, and, through interpreting it, became the veritable “Father of Assyriology,” was the English general, Sir Henry Rawlinson. His feat was another British triumph over the same rivals who had competed for the Rosetta stone; for some French explorers had been sent by their government, some years earlier, expressly to copy this inscription, and had reported that to reach the inscription was impossible. But British courage did not find it so, and in 1835 Rawlinson scaled the dangerous height and made a paper cast of about half the inscription. Diplomatic duties called him away from the task for some years, but in 1848 he returned to it, and completed the copy of all parts of the inscription that have escaped the ravages of time. And now the material was in hand for a new science, which General Rawlinson, assisted by a host of others, soon began to elaborate.

The key to the value of the Behistun inscription lies in the fact that its third language is ancient Persian. It appears that the ancient Persians had adopted the cuneiform character from their western neighbours, the Assyrians, but in so doing had made one of those essential modifications and improvements which are scarcely possible to accomplish except in the transition from one race to another. Instead of building with the arrow-heads a multitude of syllabic characters, including many homophones, as had been, and continued to be, the custom of the Assyrians, the Persians selected a few of these characters, and ascribed to them phonetic values that were almost purely alphabetical. In a word, while retaining the wedge as the basal stroke of their script, they developed an alphabet; making that last wonderful analysis of phonetic sounds which even to this day has escaped the Chinese, which the Egyptians had only partially effected and which the Phœnicians were accredited by the Greeks with having introduced into the western world. In addition to this all-essential step, the Persians had introduced the minor, but highly convenient, custom of separating the words of a sentence from one another by a particular mark, differing in this regard not only from the Assyrians and the Egyptians, but from the early Greek scribes as well.

Thanks to these simplifications, the old Persian language has been practically restored about the beginning of the nineteenth century, through the efforts of the German, Grotefend; and further advances in it were made just at this time by Burnouf in France, and Lassen in Germany, as well as by Rawlinson himself, who largely solved the problem of the Persian alphabet independently. So the Persian portion of the Behistun inscription could at last be partially deciphered. This, in itself, however, would have been no very great aid towards the restoration of the languages of the other portions, had it not chanced fortunately that the inscription is sprinkled with proper names. Now, proper names, generally speaking, are not translated from one language to another, but transliterated as nearly as the genius of the language[625] will permit. It was the fact that the Greek word “Ptolemaios” was transliterated on the Rosetta stone, that gave the first clew to the sounds of the Egyptian characters. Had the upper part of the Rosetta stone been preserved, on which, originally, there were several other names, Young would not have halted where he did in his decipherment.

But fortune, which had been at once so kind, and so tantalising in the case of the Rosetta stone, had dealt more gently with the Behistun inscription; for no fewer than ninety proper names were preserved in the Persian portion, and duplicated, in another character, in the Assyrian inscription. A study of these gave a clew to the sounds of the Assyrian characters. The decipherment of this character, however, even with this aid, proved enormously difficult, for it was soon evident that here it was no longer a question of a nearly perfect alphabet of a few characters, but of a syllabary of several hundred characters, including many homophones, or different forms for representing the same sound. But with the Persian translation for a guide on the one hand, and the Semitic languages, to which family the Assyrian belonged, on the other, the appalling task was gradually accomplished, the leading investigators being General Rawlinson, Professor Hincks, and Mr. Fox Talbot, in England; Professor Jules Oppert in Paris; and Professor Eberhard Schrader in Germany; though a host of other scholars soon entered the field.

This great linguistic feat was accomplished about the middle of the century. But so great a feat was it, that many scholars of the highest standing, including Ernest Renan in France, and Sir George Cornwall Lewis in England, declined at first to accept the results, contending that the Assyriologists had merely deceived themselves by creating an arbitrary language. The matter was put to the test in 1855, at the suggestion of Mr. Fox Talbot, when four scholars, one being Mr. Talbot himself, and the others General Rawlinson, Professor Hincks, and Professor Oppert, laid before the Royal Asiatic Society their independent translations of an hitherto untranslated Assyrian text. A committee of the society, including England’s greatest historian of the century, George Grote, broke the seals of the four translations, and reported that they found them unequivocally in accord as regards their main purport, and even surprisingly uniform as regards the phraseology of certain passages; in short, as closely similar as translations from the obscure texts of any difficult language ever are. This decision gave the work of Assyriologists an official status, so to say, and the reliability of their method has never since been in question.

Thus it has come about that these inscribed bricks from the palace of Asshurbanapal, which, when the first of them was discovered, were as meaningless as so many blank slabs, have been made to deliver up their message. And a marvellous message it is, as we have already seen.

Merely to have satisfied a vague curiosity as to the past traditions, however, would be but a small measure of the intellectual work which the oriental antiquities have had a large share in accomplishing. Their message has been one of truly world-historic import. Thanks to these monuments from Egypt and Mesopotamia, the student of human civilisation has to-day a sweep of view that hitherto has been utterly withheld from him. Until the crypts by the Nile and the earth mounds by the Tigris and Euphrates gave up their secrets, absolutely nothing was known to scholarship of the main sweep of civilisation more anciently than about the sixth century B.C. Beyond that all was myth, fable, unauthenticated tradition. And now the indubitable monuments of civilisation carry us back over a period at[626] least three times as great. Archbishop Usher’s famed Chronology, which so long dominated the ideas of men, is swept away, and we learn from evidence graven in stone and baked indelibly in bricks that in the year 4004 B.C., which our Bible margins still point out as the year of Creation, vast communities of people, in widely separated portions of the earth, had attained a high degree of civilisation. In the year when the proverbial first man wandered naked in Eden, the actual man lived with thousands of his fellow-men in vast cities, where he built houses and temples, erected wonderful monuments, practised such arts as glass-making, sculpture, and painting, and recorded his thoughts in written words. And from that day to this stretches the thread of civilisation, unbroken by any universal flood or other cataclysm.

Now, to be sure, we are told that Archbishop Usher and his kith and kin were but gullible and misguided enthusiasts, to have thought they detected chronological sequence where none such existed; but it was rank heresy to have propounded such a view until the new monuments gave us the rudiments of a true chronology. Other evidence had, indeed, proven the antiquity of the earth and of man himself, but the antiquity of civilisation still depends upon these oriental monuments alone for its demonstration. The chronology of ancient history has no other authenticated source; and chronology, as Professor Petrie has said, is “the backbone of history.” To be sure, the exact chronology of remote antiquity is not by any means as fixed and secure as might be desired. The antiquarian in dealing with the remoter epochs must count by centuries rather than by years. But the broad outlines of the question are placed beyond cavil. So long as the danger mark of the flood year stared the investigator in the face, every foot of earlier chronology was controversial ground, and each remoter century must battle for recognition. But now, thanks to the accumulation of evidence, all that is past, and the most ardent partisans of Hebrew records vie with one another in tracing back the evidences of civilisation in Egypt and Mesopotamia, by centuries and by millennia. It is thought by Professor Hilprecht, that the more recent excavations by the Americans at the site of Nippur have carried the evidence back to 6000 or perhaps even 7000 years B.C., and no one’s equanimity is disturbed by the suggestion, except, possibly, that of the Egyptologist, whose records as yet pause something like a thousand years earlier, and who feels a certain jealousy lest his Egyptian of seven thousand years ago should be proven an uninteresting parvenu.

But note how these new figures disturb the balance of history. If our forerunners of eight or nine thousand years ago were in a noonday glare of civilisation, where shall we look for the much-talked-of “dawnings of history”? By this new standard the Romans seem our contemporaries in latter-day civilisation; the “golden age” of Greece is but of yesterday; the Pyramid builders are only relatively remote. The men who built the temple of Bel, at Nippur, in the year, let us say, 5000 B.C., must have felt themselves at a pinnacle of civilisation and culture. As Professor Mahaffy has suggested, the time of the Pyramids may have been the veritable autumn of civilisation. Where, then, must we look for its spring-time? The answer to that question must come, if it comes at all, from what we now speak of as prehistoric archæology; the monuments from Memphis and Nippur and Nineveh, covering a mere 10,000 years or so, are records of later history.j

FOOTNOTES

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter]

Chapter I. Land and People

b G. Weber, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte.

c Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

d F. Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens.

e R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria.

f J. P. Peters, Nippur.

Chapter II. Old Babylonian History

b Hugo Radau, Early Babylonian History down to the IVth Dynasty of Ur.

c A. H. Sayce, from the article “Babylonia and Assyria,” in the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

d E. A. T. W. Budge, Babylonian Life and History.

Chapter III. The Rise of Assyria

b H. Winckler, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens.

c Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

d E. Babelon, Histoire de l’Orient.

e C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte.

Chapter IV. Four Generations of Assyrian Greatness

b C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte.

c Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

g E. A. T. W. Budge, Annals of Shalmaneser II, Sennacherib, and Asshurbanipal.

Chapter V. The Decline and Fall of Assyria

b R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria.

c C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte.

Chapter VI. Renascence and Fall of Babylon

b F. Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens.

Chapter VII. Manners and Customs of Babylonia-Assyria

b A. H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains.

c Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

d Strabo, The Geography of Strabo (translated from the Greek by J. Falconer and H. C. Hamilton).

e A. H. L. Heeren, Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity (Asiatic Nations).

f Joachim Menant, La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive.

Chapter VIII. The Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians

b Joachim Menant, La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive.

c L. W. King, Babylonian Religion and Mythology.

h P. Jensen, Cosmologie der Babylonier.

i H. Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit.

j L. W. King, Seven Tablets of Creation.

m Eberhard Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und Das Alte Testament, 3rd edition.

n A. Jeremias, Izdubar Nimrod.

o C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte.

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Chapter IX. Babylonian and Assyrian Culture

b A. H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains.

c Henry Smith Williams, “The Influence of Modern Research on the Scope of World History,” Prefatory Essay in Volume III of the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

d Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

e Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

f Edward Hincks, from an article “On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time,” in Volume XXIV of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 1874.

g Joachim Menant, La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive.

h C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte.

i G. Nagel, in Beiträge zur Assyriologie, Vol. IV.

j M. Montgomery, Briefe aus der Zeit Hammurabis.

k C. Johnston, in the “Epistolary Literature of the Assyrians and Babylonians” in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. XVIII.

l Friedrich Delitzsch, article “Beiträge zur Erklärung der babylonisch-assyrischen Brieflitteratur” in Beiträge zur Assyriologie, Vol. I.

m F. Lenormant, Histoire ancienne de l’Orient.

Appendix A. Classical Traditions

b Isaac Preston Cory, Ancient Fragments.

c Diodorus Siculus. The Historical Library, (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

d Claudius Ælianus, The Variable History of Ælianus (translated from the Greek by A. Fleming).

Appendix B. Excavations in Mesopotamia and Their Results

b A. H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains.

c F. Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens.

d R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria.

j Henry Smith Williams, The History of the Art of Writing.

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[629]

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY, WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

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Books

World

Index

Hellenica World - Scientific Library